Ken Randall, dean of the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, has tendered his resignation effective the end of the academic year, according to Virginia Business magazine, citing remarks by GMU Provost James Antony to GMU’s academic affairs committee.
Scalia Law School Dean Ken Randall.
A university spokesman denied that Randall’s departure is related to last month’s House Judiciary Committee report, based on evidence in Randall’s testimony, that accused GMU President Gregory Washington of lying to Congress.
Reports Virginia Business: Randall … said that Washington retaliated against the law school for the dean’s decision not to appoint an equity adviser for hiring decisions, and Randall also accused Washington of apparently sabotaging an American Bar Association accreditation audit of Scalia Law School.
Doswell, VA – Nearly 350 acres of farmland where the legendary Triple Crown champion Secretariat frolicked as a colt are now protected forever by a conservation easement held by the Capital Region Land Conservancy.
Known as “The Cove,” the low-lying pasture bordered by the North Anna River was the “nursery” for the broodmares and foals of Christopher Chenery’s renowned Meadow Stable, founded in 1936. The Cove’s rich grasses nurtured many other celebrated Thoroughbreds such as Riva Ridge, who won the 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, and the eminent broodmare, Somethingroyal, dam of Secretariat. In fact, The Cove was instrumental in establishing The Meadow as “an empire built on broodmares.”
Today, thanks to the generosity of Kevin Engel of Engel Family Farms, who purchased The Cove in 2023, the historic land will remain dedicated to agricultural use.
House speaker predicts short tenure for any UVA president selected by current UVA Board.
🔶⚔️🔷Larry Sabato & VA House Speaker Don Scott discuss @SpanbergerForVA takeover of @UVA Board & President search
❓Will Spanberger dismantle UVA agreement with @CivilRights? ❓Will Rector Sheridan & V. Rector Wilkinson be fired? ❓Will lawsuits be filed by current Board… pic.twitter.com/1MiRtJtdC3
An alternative redistricting strategy for VA Democrats
by Paul Goldman
On Friday, I showed how the recent U.S. Supreme decision on the GOP Texas redistricting put a fork in the Spanberger/Scott/Surovell mid-decade redistricting plan. The High Court made certain that Virginia and other states got the message: once the campaign season is in full swing, fundamental changes to election rules like giving final approval to new congressional districts in close proximity to the start of early voting would be rejected. The liberal Warren Court of the 1960’s actually agreed. Thus, even if Virginians approved a constitutional change in an April referendum, the timeline for getting the courts to sign off on the proposed changes to the congressional districts would be too late to implement in 2026.
But today, I will layout a different strategy for how VA Democrats can use the Texas rationale to possibly do a redistricting the Supremes will have far more difficulty in rejecting. This alternative strategy is admittedly a long shot. But it beats a no shot. Moreover, the General Assembly should do both strategies simultaneously: continue with the Spanberger/Scott/Surovell approach while also pursuing the alternative proposed below.
BASIS OF MY THESIS IS ARTICLE II, SECTION 6 of the VA CONSTITUTION
It reads in pertinent part:
“Every (congressional) district shall be drawn in accordance with the requirements of federal and state laws that address racial and ethnic fairness, including the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, and judicial decisions interpreting such laws.”
Virginia returns soon to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
by Steve Haner,
The regional carbon tax on electricity generation favored by Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger and legislative Democrats rose to a record amount in the December auction, $26.73 per ton of carbon emissions.
That is a 20% increase from three months ago and is 4% higher than the previous top price, set last year. The tax amount is up 80% since Virginia left the process just two years ago. The Thomas Jefferson Institute’s predictions that the tax take in Virginia will reach or surpass $500 million per year looks a safe bet.
Had Virginia sold 5 million allowances in the December 3 auction, about what it will be selling once it returns to the program, generation companies would have paid $133 million or so.
This, of course, is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. There are four such auctions a year. Governor Ralph Northam (D) took Virginia into RGGI, collecting $828 million over three years. Two years ago, Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) was able to repeal the underlying state regulation, but Spanberger (D) expressed the intention to join again during her campaign.
The only suspense, really, is how and when Virginia rejoins the other ten states still in the compact. RGGI runs on a three-year contract schedule and restarting as of January 2027 is the easiest path. It is possible, however, that Virginia could join in time to participate in some of the 2026 auctions, the final four in the three-year cycle.
One of two things is likely to happen. The Virginia Court of Appeals, which is considering the Youngkin Administration’s appeal of a legal challenge to the repeal, could issue a ruling now and uphold the circuit court’s ruling that the regulation could not be repealed.
Or the incoming General Assembly could pass legislation to rejoin as part of a “must pass” emergency bill such as the annual set of corrections to the current budget. The Republicans who control Pennsylvania’s state senate refused to pass a budget that included RGGI membership and thus killed it there. Republicans have sufficient votes in the new Virginia legislature to prevent it being passed on an emergency basis, if they wish to. They do not have the ability to stop a regular bill, which could take effect in time for the September and December 2026 auctions.
Then the third thing will happen, the energy companies that buy the allowances (pay the tax) will figure out how to pass the cost along to customers. When last we saw it on our Dominion bills, it worked out to $4.43 for every 1,000 kilowatt-hours of use – residential or industrial. Will this be touted as move toward affordability? Sure, why not?
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on Little Sorrel Before and After
by Patricia N. Saffran and Ann McLean
American museums used to have art exhibitions that dignified the human spirit. By contrast, today’s museums promote the wonton destruction and desecration of great works of art, mainly targeting the South, as in the Monuments Exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick in Los Angeles. Currently, museum policies are more in keeping with Joseph Goebbels, who said, “We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection.”
The museums’ new role is to cover up what the public wants as well. On October 24, 2025, the Valentine Museum in Richmond was supposed to release the results of their survey about Richmond’s Confederate statues, done jointly with the Black History Museum (BHM). The monuments are either sitting next to a sewer near the James River, Richmond, or they were sent secretly, without the approval of the public, to L.A.’s Monuments Exhibition, where they’re on display unrestored with paint splashes to help ridicule the South.
(Charlottesville’s Beaux Arts monuments fared worse with Lee melted down by the Jefferson School African Heritage Center, and Keck’s masterpiece of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, bought by L.A. and subsequently destroyed by Kara Walker to make into a new monster sculpture, Unmanned Drone, for LA’s show. She ignored that Jackson taught black children to read and write.)
🚨SPOTTED in Richmond – the Radical Left is now viciously targeting public servants by posting their pictures around town and encouraging people to target and harass them and their CHILDREN.
This comes as Abigail Spanberger & Virginia Democrats continue to demonize law… pic.twitter.com/ZrfA0OJ1NN
Solution: Install speed humps that force drivers to slow down.
Sounds like an excellent plan. What could possibly go wrong?
If you drive in and around the City of Richmond, you’ll notice that the new administration has been placing speed humps (what used to be known as speed bumps) all over the city. Most potholes are still there, but Public Works is feverishly constructing tire-busting, suspension-harming, first responder-slowing and general-nuisance asphalt ramps in “high-traffic corridors.”
Instead of doing the obvious thing — enforcing the existing speeding laws — the city (after careful consideration for more than five years) produced its Final Report on the so-called Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NMTP) in 2022. The report is “the result of an extensive outreach program initiated by the City’s Department of Transportation Services (now in the Department of Public Works) to solicit input from the City’s residents, from the Transportation and Technology Council Standing Committee (now called the Land Use, Housing, and Transportation Council Standing Committee), from the City Planning Commission and from the City Council.” Sounds like hundreds of people were involved in this hodgepodge.
“Are we teaching people to think or just teaching them to judge?”
At a recent Federalist Society panel discussion, UVA Law professor Xiao Wang described the response from students and colleagues to his role in winning a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in Ames vs. Ohio Youth Services. The ruling ended the “heightened burden” requirement for heterosexuals to prove discrimination in employment cases.
Money quote: “Our job [as law professors] is to teach the children, not be the children.”
The legal experts who say yesterday’s decision on Texas redistricting allows Virginia to do mid-decade redistricting are wrong. I warned months ago the Supremes would okay Texas but not Virginia. Those experts who think otherwise need to read prior election law cases.
There is a long history of the High Court rejecting major electoral changes enacted after the campaign season is in full swing. Starting on January 1, the 2026 Virginia congressional campaign officially begins under the existing district boundaries. By my calculations, the earliest the proposed new districts can become law would be around May 1.
Thus, the campaign will have been ongoing for 4 months in the old districts. The districts put in place by a non-partisan process. The districts voters have become accustomed to.
Let’s assume the required 3-Judge Court approves the new Spanberger districts on June 1. The Republicans will appeal directly to the United States Supreme Court as the law allows in redistricting cases. We can assume the Supreme Court will stay the lower court order. This means the old districts will still be in effect.
Let’s further assume the Supreme Court rules takes up the case and on July 1. Election day is barely 5 months away. In this five-month period, the parties must conduct their nomination processes, independent candidates must be allowed to collect signatures to file to be on the ballot, and a myriad of other mandatory actions must be taken as required to ensure fair elections and informed voters.
Most importantly, all this needs to be done prior to early voting starting in late September.
Meaning: the Supreme Court would have to approve new districts less than three months before the voting actually starts.
Democrat Senator and full-time whiner, Mark Warner, announced Tuesday that he’s running for a fourth term.
Sigh.
This 70-year-old multi-millionaire businessman has been sitting in the Senate (when he isn’t in his car making cringy videos about how much he hates Trump) since 2008.
Although he initially presented himself as a moderate “Blue Dog”Democrat, it wasn’t long before he revealed himself to be a partisan hack. Six years into his Senate career, during a dogfight over control of the Virginia State Senate, Warner jumped into the fray and nearly lost the next election.
In an October 2014 column headlined “So Long Mr. Above-It-all, Warner Is A Political Operative After All” I expressed my, ah, disappointment.
Just like that, it’s gone.
Sen. Mark Warner’s carefully crafted persona, that is. The bipartisan brand he relentlessly burnished from his earliest days in the Governor’s Mansion has now all but evaporated. So has his image as an ineffective, but guileless, U.S. senator whose specialty was reaching across the aisle.Continue reading.
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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