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Day of Infamy
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Outfoxing Judge Thomas
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.”
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Jeanine’s Memes
See more memes at The Bull Elephant.
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RGGI Tax Rose Again. How, When Does it Return to VA?
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?
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Green Energy and “Affordability”
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The New American Museum: Judge, Jury and Executioner
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.)
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Why ICE Employees Wear Masks
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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Caution: Speed Humps Ahead
by David Saunders
Problem: There’s a rise in pedestrian accidents.
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.
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Outrage Over Reason at UVA Law
“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.”
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Did U.S. Supreme Court Kill Spanberger’s Redistricting Plan?
by Paul Goldman
Image credit: Chat GPT 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.
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Sen. Mark Warner Pledged To Serve Just Two Terms.
That Was 29 Years Ago.
by Kerry Dougherty
Lucky us.
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.
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Scott Pio’s 95 Theses
Mark Peake’s resignation is only the beginning for a true Republican Reformation.
by Ken Reid
Legend has it that Augustinian priest Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation on Oct. 31, 1517, by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany — which urged substantial reform of the Roman Catholic Church and power of the papacy.
In reality, his Ninety-five Theses was titled: “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” and was not nailed to any door, according to Wikipedia.
However, Luther’s activist manner and outrage at the Roman Catholic Church launched a necessary Reformation that made Christianity and humanity better over time.
Today, a conservative activist in Virginia, who also is very passionate and lacks political correctness, has issued a call to reform the Republican Party of Virginia in wake the recent statewide election debacle
I am not equating Loudoun County Republican Committee Chairman Scott Pio with Luther, but reformation of the RPV, its State Central Committee and entire focus is critically needed, or else Virginia is destined to be a corrupt, one-party Democrat state for years to come, and thus unlivable for millions.
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Released Without Charges
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The SCC Decides: Dominion’s Rates and Profits Go Up, New Rules on Data Centers
by Steve Haner,
The massive data centers behind a growing energy crunch in Virginia will begin to pay substantially more for electricity in Dominion Energy’s territory, but not until 2027. The State Corporation Commission’s (SCC) approval of a new rate structure for the largest users will probably only intensify debates about what is their “fair share.”
On November 25, the Commission issued its final order on a Dominion general rate review, approving the new GS-5 rate class for the large digital customers and a general rate increase for all customers. It was the same day the SCC approved another Dominion application, this one to build a contested natural gas generation plant in Chesterfield County.
It wrapped up the first general review of the utility’s revenues, profits and operating rules since the 2023 General Assembly had relaxed some of the mandates it had imposed to protect the utility’s profits. At the time, the Thomas Jefferson Institute praised the discretion returned to the SCC, but warned it would not lower customer costs, despite promises to that effect. The coming price hikes might have been worse, however, without that added independence.
The bottom line for consumers is their bills will rise as of January 1 and then will rise again a year later. Over 2026 and 2027, the utility can collect more than $1.3 billion more from its 2.8 million customers through higher base rates. The SCC also approved an increase in the utility’s authorized profit margin, from a 9.7 to 9.8 percent return on equity.
For a residential consumer using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, a typical month for many, the base rate will rise $11.24 on January 1 and another $2.36 on January 1, 2027. There will be comparable cost increases in the customer categories for businesses of all sizes, as well. The rising cost of doing business usually ends up adding to prices for the customers of those businesses.
The higher authorized return on equity will also apply to all the utility’s various rate adjustment clauses, such as the separate charges it imposes to pay for the offshore wind construction, all the recent solar projects it has added and now the approved Chesterfield County natural gas generator. The Chesterfield project will also spark a price hike next month, initially another 60 cents per 1,000 kWh but quickly rising to over $2.
