Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Plea to Save Capitol Square Statues

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Portrait of a smiling older man with short white hair, wearing a blue suit with a checked pattern and a light blue shirt, standing in front of a bookshelf.
    Delegate Lee Ware, R-Powhatan

    Delegate Lee Ware, R-Powhatan, delivered the following speech on the floor of the House of Delegates yesterday. — JAB

    Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to a bill that will shortly come before us.

    Ladies and Gentlemen of the House, please allow me to meditate with you as a student of history and, for over thirty years, a teacher of History to high school students of every complexion. I offer the following observations as a contribution to Black History Month.

    My great-great grandfather was a Colonel in the 44th Massachusetts. He led troops in the War of 1861 in both North and South Carolina. After his service in the field, he became Military Advisor to the legislature of his home state.

    That Union officer’s comrade and friend was Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who was the grandson and great-grandson of U.S. Presidents John Quincy Adams and John Adams, respectively. Charles Jr. served with distinction at Gettysburg, then was named Colonel of the fabled 5th Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry.

    To add to the drama, Col. Adams’s father was Mr. Lincoln’s United States Minister to the United Kingdom, and he was instrumental in preventing Britain from siding with the Confederacy.

    You see, then, that these men were opposed to Virginia in 1861.

    Yet it was Charles Adams, Jr., who in 1907 was asked to give the Centennial Address of the birth of none other than Robert E. Lee at Washington & Lee University here in Lexington, Virginia.

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  • Sanctuary Virginia: How Our Leaders Are Undermining Law, Borders, and Justice

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Map of Virginia showing areas with current sanctuary policies and those at risk under 2026 legislation, with regions highlighted in red and light pink.

    by Jeff Bayard

    A question every Virginian should ask

    Is Virginia becoming a sanctuary state? The honest answer is yes—and it is happening faster than most citizens realize.

    Since January 2026, Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed executive actions terminating Virginia’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, the General Assembly is advancing bills that would prohibit local police and sheriffs from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in any meaningful way. Furthermore, across Northern Virginia, local governments have adopted “trust policies” that shield illegal immigrants from federal authorities.

    This is not merely an abstract policy debate. Instead, it raises concrete questions that affect every Virginia taxpayer, every community, and every family: What happens when state and local government refuses to cooperate with federal law enforcement? Who bears the cost—financial and otherwise—when authorities release criminal illegal immigrants back into our communities instead of handing them to ICE? And what lessons should Virginia learn from states like Minnesota, California, and Illinois that have gone further down this road?

    This analysis examines the facts. We will look at Virginia’s statewide laws, local sanctuary policies, the 2026 legislative push, what the data actually shows about costs and consequences, and what other states’ experiences tell us about Virginia’s likely future.

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  • A Portrait of Suicidal Empathy

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by the Liberty Unyielding Staff

    Group of prisoners in striped uniforms running through a large open gate, with a guard tower in the background and a figure lying on the ground.
    Prison break. Image credit: Grok

    “In 1996, Travis Lewis broke into the Snowden family home in Arkansas during a burglary and murdered 75-year-old Sally Snowden McKay and her cousin. He was convicted and imprisoned. Years later, Sally’s daughter Martha McKay chose radical forgiveness. She visited Lewis in prison, advocated for his parole, and after his 2018 release, hired him to work at the same historic house she had converted into a bed and breakfast. In March 2020, after being confronted over suspected theft, Lewis attacked and killed Martha inside that very home.”

    Criminals often commit more crimes after being released. Nationally, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4)).

    Yet, the Virginia legislature is passing legislation to make it hard for the parole board to keep some dangerous inmates in prison, by telling the parole board not to deny parole based on factors outside an inmate’s “demonstrated ability to change” if the inmate committed his crime as a juvenile. But what if an inmate remains dangerous due to a personality disorder, and claims he lacks the ability to change that? How does the parole board “demonstrate” that the inmate has the ability to change the dangerous personality trait?

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  • Before Deeds and Zillow

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Arlington-Culpeper Grant Sparked Bacon’s Rebellion and Redefined Virginia Real Estate

    A 1736 map of the Northern Neck Proprietary in Virginia, showing land boundaries and rivers, with decorative elements and compass rose.

    Virginia real estate history does not begin with subdivisions or courthouse deed books. It begins in political exile. In 1649, after the execution of King Charles I during the English Civil War, England’s monarchy collapsed. His son, Charles II, fled Europe and depended on loyal aristocrats for financial survival.

    With no treasury and no functioning government, Charles II used land in the American colonies as compensation. In September 1649, he granted a massive tract in Virginia to seven royalist supporters. This territory stretched between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, from the Chesapeake Bay westward into unmapped Appalachian terrain. The grant would become known as the Northern Neck Proprietary.

    The scale was extraordinary. More than 5.28 million acres of fertile river valleys, timberland, and frontier wilderness were transferred into private control. The proprietors were given authority not only to sell land but to collect quitrents, establish counties, and manage economic development within the territory.

    This was not simply a land deal. It created a privately controlled real estate jurisdiction operating alongside colonial Virginia.

    The Restoration and colonial resistance

    For more than a decade, the 1649 patent held little practical force. Parliament controlled England and its colonies. Virginia’s colonial government continued issuing its own land patents and organizing counties inside proprietary boundaries.

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  • Cost of Undergrounding Program is Mostly Profit to Lenders, Stockholders

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    And the winner is….

    Dominion Energy Virginia’s ongoing program to place selected neighborhood service lines underground, spreading the bill for the upgrades onto all its 2.7 million customers, will cost another $3.8 billion if the General Assembly blesses its extension for another ten years.

    Of that, about $1.6 billion is the cost of the construction work and $2.2 billion (58 percent) will be to pay interest to the lenders or profit to the stockholders who put up the working capital. Those numbers are from an analysis provided to a curious legislator by the State Corporation Commission’s staff in a letter earlier this week.

    Almost a third of the money will come from the utility’s commercial and industrial customers (yes, including the scapegoated data centers), the SCC reported. But the upgrades being financed will benefit few if any business customers. An earlier report on Bacon’s Rebellion extrapolating data from an SCC case file had some similar cost projections.

    When it is the business customers subsidizing electricity for homeowners, nobody in the legislature squawks at all. Politicians only feign outrage if homeowners think they are subsidizing businesses. And none of them dares admit how much profit their favorite political donor is making from all this. (If half the financing is equity, not debt, more than a billion dollars in profit is a pretty good payoff for $20 million in campaign donations. And this is hardly the only 2026 bill enriching the utility.)

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  • New Democratic Districts Invite Republicans to Vote

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Chris Saxman

    Proverb

    If you can’t beat them, join them

    and as George Bailey said in It’s a Wonderful Life:

    This is a very interesting situation

    Having seen three different polls (one public and two private) that show the constitutional amendment to re-gerrymander Virginia’s congressional districts is under 50%, the odds of its passage on April 21st are clearly in doubt.

    No wonder national Democrats are pouring money into the Commonwealth to win this vote.

    This is not a done deal. Hence the money.

    Okay. Let’s play it out…suppose the amendment passes.

    Democrats then have a clear path to a 10-1 federal delegation in the House of Representatives.

    The GOP would be on track to losing districts 1, 2, 5, and 6 as none of them would have less than 56% of the vote going to Democrats based on the 2025 gubernatorial landslide victory of Abigail Spanberger.

    Map illustrating the 2025 Gubernatorial election results by district in Virginia, showing a breakdown of U.S. House, House of Delegates, and State Senate outcomes, with color coding for political party strength.

    What would Republicans and Independents then do in these new districts if they know the very likely outcome in November is a Democratic representative?

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  • Cadet Crisis: VMI’s Culture on Trial

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Proposed legislation reopens questions into the validity of the state’s investigation into VMI student culture.

    Four military personnel in uniform holding a red flag with the Virginia Military Institute emblem in an outdoor setting.
    he past six years at VMI have been defined by the microscopic look into VMl’s student body culture by the state of Virginia. Photo courtesy of Pikabuu2 via the Creative Commons License

    by Jackson Doane

    It’s commonly said that good fences make good neighbors. Between Washington and Lee (W&L) and the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), nothing separates us but a short walk, yet we have long been good neighbors. So when news broke in January that two bills were introduced in the General Assembly that would limit VMl’s ability to self­govern, I felt it only right to look into why our neighbors were suddenly under scrutiny.

    House Bill 1374 and House Bill 1377 were recently introduced, and since then, the complicated and, at times, hostile relationship between the school and the state government – which dates back at least five and a half years – has resurfaced with renewed intensity.

    In October 2020, a front-page article in the Washington Post detailed allegations of racially discriminatory incidents at VMI over the preceding years. The story drew national attention, especially in the wake of a summer and fall of race-based political protests, and thrust VMI into the national spotlight.

    The article caught the attention of the then-governor at the time, Ralph Northam, who is also a VMI alumnus. He co-signed a letter with the lieutenant governor and attorney general to VMl’s Board of Visitors, the school’s governing body, calling for a “state-funded, independent third-party review” of the student body’s culture, particularly regarding students of nonwhite ethnicities.

    Northam’s letter described what he believed to be a “clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism at the Virginia Military Institute.” That letter, combined with national media attention and pressure from state officials, led the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) to commission an investigation by the third-party law firm Barnes & Thornburg, which released a report published in June 2021. The 2021 report
    The SCHEV investigation at VMI was conducted from January 7, 2021, to June 1, 2021, spanning a period of 145 days. According to SCHEV, it was done with the purpose of investigating allegations of racism and sexism at VMI.

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  • Virginia’s Population Reached 8.88 Million in 2025

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Map showing the 2025 population estimates by locality in Virginia, color-coded based on population size: more than 250,000, more than 100,000, more than 25,000, and less than 25,000.
    Click here to view interactive map. Credit: Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service

    The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has published its mid-decade population for Virginia and its localities. Summary from the Weldon Cooper website:

    Virginia’s population reached 8.88 million as of July 1, 2025, an increase of more than 248,000 residents since the 2020 Census. Between 2020 and 2025, the state’s average annual growth rate was 0.5 percent, slightly below the national rate of 0.6 percent. Virginia remains the 12th most populous state and ranked 11th nationally in numeric population growth during this period.

    Of the state’s population increase since 2020, natural increase (births minus deaths) contributed 78,388 people (31.5 percent), while net migration (people moving in minus people moving out) added 170,326 people (68.5 percent).

  • The Data Center Scapegoat Led to Two Different Sacrificial Altars

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Virginia’s world-leading data center industry, once a source of economic pride to our Commonwealth, has become the scapegoat of the 2026 General Assembly. The State Senate and House of Delegates have built different altars for its sacrifice.

    The Senate is about to vote to strip away the major sales and use tax exemption which has helped make Virginia the center of this burgeoning industry. This would raise the taxes they pay by more than $1 billion initially and then up to $2 billion annually, an infusion of cash the Senate will happily find ways to spend. 

    House Democrats have gone a different direction, keeping the exemption but making it conditional upon the industry adopting a fully Green New Deal energy policy. Ending any reliance on natural gas or diesel generation is the stated goal. Companies would be forced to buy renewable energy certificates on an even faster schedule than the Virginia Clean Economy Act requires for Dominion Energy Virginia and Appalachian Power Company.  

    And both chambers have approved versions of legislation that will allow the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to assign 100 percent of the future costs of Dominion Energy Virginia’s energy capacity purchases and transmission upgrades onto that one industry. There is no reason that approach will not spread beyond Dominion if the SCC goes along, given politicians are already bragging this will lower bills for everybody else. 

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  • Follow-up on Voter Registration Rolls Suit

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    There was considerable reaction to my recent article regarding the U.S. Dept. of Justice suing Virginia for not turning over an unredacted copy of the statewide list of registered voters. 

    Two comments in particular struck me as needing some response from me. Matt Hurt posed this question: “The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 both require states to maintain accurate voter rolls, and both provide DOJ with the authority to enforce them. If DOJ doesn’t have access to that information, how can it ensure states are compliant with these laws?” After considerable discussion, Nathan had a request of me: “I hope you will follow up, to provide the information necessary for a more complete understanding of this issue.”

    These are legitimate questions and requests. I was out of the house for most of the day both Saturday and Sunday and thus not in a position to respond. I have now done some research and can provide some follow-up.

    First, my major concern with this request lies with how DOJ said it was going to use it. In its MOU that DOJ asked agencies to agree to is this statement: “You agree therefore that within forty-five (45) days of receiving that notice from the Justice Department of any issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns, your state will clean its VRL/Data by removing ineligible voters.”

    Simply stated, DOJ would examine a state’s voter registration list and identify ineligible voters for the state to remove from its registration list. This would be an extraordinary step. The state would be relinquishing a key component of its authority to administer elections. Identifying “ineligible” voters is prone to many errors, especially for the federal government, which is removed from the details of individual registration statuses. Even state governments, in their effort to purge ineligible voters, inadvertently remove eligible voters in the process. For example, in 2024, the Youngkin administration revoked the registration of approximately 1,600 eligible voters in its effort to find noncitizens who had registered.

    Turning to the legal authority for the current DOJ request for unredacted statewide registration data, the federal government cited the following federal legislation statutes:

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  • It Helps to Have Friends in High Places

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    (more…)

  • April 21: Not Really What Virginia Needs Now

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A group of children protesting in the streets, holding signs saying 'Yes' and 'No', with a variety of expressions showing determination and passion.

    by Gordon C. Morse

    Want a political version of blunt force trauma? Then welcome to Virginia’s April 21 referendum on congressional redistricting. Look at the map and behold the winners. No one has to be fair about “fairness.”

    It’s “temporary,” they keep saying. Temporary — as in, it won’t last long.

    You could say as much about the vaunted redistricting commission. Installed via a constitutional amendment but five years ago, it proved very temporary.

    Appointed to a college or university board by the governor? That’s temporary, too.

    Such appointments were previously tantamount to service. There was no pause in between or abrupt removal. You even got a certificate, suitable for framing: “To All To Whom These Presents Shall Come — Greeting. Know Ye, that from special trust and confidence reposed in his fidelity, our Governor by virtue of authority vested in him by law, hath appointed and hereby commissions …”

    I pulled that language right off a certificate in the hallway, which names moi to the Board of Visitors of Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009. It’s signed by Gov. Tim Kaine.

    Republican Speaker Bill Howell, with his party’s majority in the House of Delegates then, could have killed that appointment dead to rights. He did not. Why? Because Speaker Howell was an honorable public servant who respected Virginia’s governing traditions.

    Or maybe Speaker Howell just shrugged and said to himself, “Jeez, that twit,” and let my appointment go with no more thought.

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  • The General Assembly’s 22.5% “Labor Tax” Gamble

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Derrick A. Max

    As the Virginia General Assembly enters the final weeks of its 2026 session, a wave of new labor mandates is about to reach the Governor’s desk, two of which she has promised to sign, and one she seems inclined to support as well.

    House Bill 5 (Paid Sick Leave), Senate Bill 2 (Paid Family and Medical Leave), and House and Senate Bill 1 ($15 minimum wage) are moving through both chambers, putting the Commonwealth on the verge of a fundamental transformation in its labor market — one that carries a rigid and predictable consequence for every small and medium sized business in the Commonwealth. 

    For those tracking the economic health of Virginia, these aren’t just “wage and benefit” bills; they represent a coordinated, multi-layered surcharge on the act of hiring. When you combine a $15 minimum wage with a new sick leave mandate and a paid family and medical leave tax, you are pricing growth out of reach for many smaller firms, and reducing employment for low productivity, entry-level employees.

    The 3.3% Base

    House Bill 5 mandates one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. This calculates to a fixed 3.33% mandatory increase in the cost of labor.

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  • The Fiscal Flywheel Effect

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    James A. Bacon

    In my Feb. 13 podcast, former Finance Secretary Steve Cummings explained the positive feedback loop between strong state finances and economic development. His observations about the fiscal flywheel effect are worth highlighting here. –JAB

    Cummings: “The underlying premise here is growth. When you have a declining revenue stream, when you have declining population, you’re gonna have a really hard time running a government and running it effectively.

    “Through the policies that the governor implemented, we’ve attracted companies, we’ve added 277,000 jobs over the term of the governor’s administration. There’s still 220,000 open jobs, not counting jobs that aren’t yet open, but 85,000 new jobs that are in the economic development pipeline to be delivered over the next five years. And that does not include the 40,000 construction jobs that are associated with them. So, when you put all that together, it’s like 600,000 people who still are looking to fill jobs and growth that’s coming. So, Virginia has jobs.

    “This is the narrative that we think is fact-based and others don’t want to talk about. And the reality is that at 220,000, we have 1.6 jobs for every unemployed person in Virginia. Nationally, it’s under one. That dynamic is underlying your revenue stream because withholding is our biggest revenue source. And that is what can help the flywheel get going here, where we are successful in generating revenues that continue to grow and which allows us to fund other things and reduce taxes.

    “You can look at a couple other key states here. North Carolina is the best example. They got that flywheel going five to 10 years ago, and they have been consistently reducing taxes while their budget has increased.”

  • VDH Rejects CDC Vaccination Guideline Changes

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Dr. Cameron Webb, Virginia State Health Commissioner

    Virginia has joined 23 other states and the District of Columbia in rejecting the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control regarding childhood vaccinations. 

    The CDC guidelines no longer include hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, flu, COVID-19 and meningitis in the routine immunization schedule.

    Explaining that the recent changes in the CDC guidelines were made “in the absence of new data or safety signals to prompt such an update,” Dr. Cameron Webb, Virginia State Commissioner of Health, in a recent letter to clinicians throughout the state, said that the Virginia Dept. of Health “strongly recommends that all children in the Commonwealth be vaccinated in accordance with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Recommended Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule” instead.

    Thanks to Axios of Richmond for alerting me to this story

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

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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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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