As a Virginia woman, I am no stranger to the continued struggle over protecting women’s spaces and girls’ sports. We have fought tirelessly for the idea that privacy, fairness, and safety matter, and that acknowledging biological reality is not intolerance, but common sense.
For decades, Democrats have claimed to be champions for women. But where are those so-called champions when women are the ones being harmed? In Congress, Abigail Spanberger has had every chance to stand for women, defend equality, and protect the spaces that belong to us. Instead, she has doubled down on supporting policies that have eroded women’s privacy and dignity by letting men into women’s spaces.
The GOP had an opportunity to force Abigail Spanberger into a no-win position on redistricting. They blew it.
by Paul Goldman
General Assembly Democrats hope to speed a measure through the legislature that would allow voters to approve a constitutional amendment providing for redistricting in time for the 2026 congressional election. Democratic nominee for Governor Abigail Spanberger has said she does not oppose those efforts. However, with the campaign still underway, she says, “I will let the General Assembly take this step, and then we’ll talk calendar issues later.”
Two successive legislatures must adopt a resolution to put before the voters. Time is tight — the 2026 elections are just one year away — and extraordinary measures are called for. If Dems have any chance to make redistricting a reality, Spanberger will have to get actively involved, assuming she gets elected.
This series is being constructed specifically to support legislation in the 2026 General Assembly. To reiterate the legislative recommendations from Part 3:
Recommended legislation
Consumer protection. Right now, citizens in Virginia Beach and in other communities have no defense against poor and badly staffed nursing homes that charge too much. The good ones simply do not have nearly enough beds to support demand.
Hospitals and insurance care managers can helpfully provide more information to patients about to transfer or to their caregivers. That should include useful information on local nursing homes, such as:
the latest inspection ratings and staffing ratings,
average nursing CMI as a proxy for cost,
number of beds, and
average occupancy.
That does not happen broadly in Virginia.
Those service providers can be required by law to provide to patients facing a nursing home stay a written handout including:
specified CMS data tailored to hospital service areas, and
a written explanation of the meanings of the information.
The law would not challenge those required to take the actions because the data do not change very often. It would provide a very necessary service to citizens.
🚨 FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA: Jorge Armando Melendez-Gonzalez, a career criminal and illegal alien from El Salvador, was arrested 10 times and charged with 19 different crimes between March 2018 and July 2025.@EROWashington previously lodged two immigration detainers against… https://t.co/RKfEgZ4aJ6
Here’s the kicker: “@EROWashington previously lodged two immigration detainers against Melendez-Gonzalez with Fairfax County. Fairfax County officials REFUSED to honor the detainers, releasing Melendez-Gonzalez back into the community.“
You could respect Virginia Democrats if they would just be honest.
Alas, it’s not in their nature and so we must endure endless gaslighting from the left as they breathlessly work to undo the constitutional amendment that the vast majority of Virginians voted for five years ago. You know, the measure that ended political gerrymandering and handed the responsibility of drawing congressional districts to a bipartisan commission.
Virginia has 11 congressional districts. Six are Democrat and five are Republican, an indication that in this closely divided commonwealth, the districts are fair.
As other states – without similar constitutional restrictions – rush to redraw congressional maps along political lines, Virginia’s Democratic leadership is frantically working to join in the gerrymandering frenzy while they control both chambers of the General Assembly.
All while pretending this is simply an exercise in democracy.
Nursing home costs and payments are complex subjects not often explained.
Patients need a place for round-the-clock skilled nursing care to continue to heal from surgeries after hospital discharge. For some, their care is too complex to get at home, or their homes are not suitable for such care. They need skilled nursing facility (SNF) beds.
The patient’s skilled nursing insurance, including but not limited to Medicare and Medicaid, pays the bill. Those with insurance co-pays pay their percentage either through a Medicare Advantage plan or something similar. The payers include the poor and middle class alike. The wealthy may or may not have other options.
Those needing institutional long-term care (LTC) and who do not have long-term care insurance have two options: Medicaid or out-of-pocket. It is very expensive care. Most (80%) use Medicaid even if they have to pay down assets to qualify.
Nursing homes get the bulk of their money from those two government insurance programs. Some are demonstrably not earning what they are paid, but the government does not effectively assess value in Medicare and Medicaid payments.
Market forces are diminished by failures of government. Not enough hospitals assist patients in understanding their limited choices.
Virginia’s elections are down to the wire. The election is Tuesday.
The latest poll, by Roanoke College based on responses from 1,041 likely voters, shows Democrat Abigail Spanberger with a 10-point lead (51% to 41%) over Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in the gubernatorial race.
Democrat Ghazali Hashmi leads Republican John Reid in the race for lieutenant governor by two points (42% to 40%).
And Republican Jason Miyares is ahead of Jay Jones in the bid for Attorney General by 8 points (46% to 38%).
But, hey, what do pollsters know? How many ever get it right? Compare them to the all-wise, all-knowing readers and commenters who frequent Bacon’s Rebellion. This is your chance to prove how much more you know than everybody else! Post a comment and tell us who you think will win Virginia’s statewide races, and why.
(For readers who have never commented before, click on the headline above and scroll to the bottom of the page. You need to register with the Disqus commenting platform in order to post a comment.)
To read more about fortune telling through the reading of pig entrails, read on…
Last week, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panelists argued that Abigail Spanberger wasn’t dominating the Virginia gubernatorial race because of sexism. The gaffe prompted her opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, to post on X, “Who wants to tell them?”
Had the shoe been on the other foot, if these political commentators overlooked a Democrat black woman running against a Republican white woman, mainstream media outlets would be conjuring up Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech for weeks.
Given the incessant lip service liberals have paid to “racial justice” and “equity,” such an oversight seems like blasphemy for Democrats. In truth, though, they only care about race when it’s politically expedient.
Case and point—four years ago, another liberal commentator on MSNBC who makes his living off racial commentary, Michael Eric Dyson, calledEarle-Sears a “black mouth” for “white supremacist practices.”
Like other black conservatives, Earle-Sears is targeted with verbal abuse from the sanctimonious “Hate has no home here” political party. Last month, Democrat Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, went on a racist rant about Earle-Sears. She said, “All skin folks ain’t kinfolk! We don’t need somebody who looks like me in the Governor’s mansion … Don’t be fooled!”
This article will explore a single geographic area, Virginia Beach, to focus on what nursing home choices mean in practice to the citizenry of Virginia’s largest city.
The quality of the nursing home inventory in Virginia Beach is illustrative of that of all of south Hampton Roads and much of Virginia. Offered below is an overview of the fifteen nursing homes in my city. The for-profit chain nursing homes here, eleven of 15, present an enormous challenge to citizens and to state oversight. The state is challenged because all are owned by out-of-state chains.
Except as noted, all facilities listed offer both skilled nursing beds certified for Medicare and long-term care beds certified for Medicaid. Many of the beds can be flexed to either purpose. Each may accept other insurance or out-of-pocket payments.
Virginia Beach (2) and Norfolk (2) general hospitals are all Sentara facilities. They are included among five Sentara general hospitals of the total of seven in south Hampton Roads. Both regional trauma centers are Sentara hospitals. Sentara exited the nursing home business in November of 2020, when it closed on the sale of all seven of its nursing facilities to Saber Healthcare. That healthcare system now faces the same mostly dreadful choices for patient transfers to skilled nursing after surgery as do its patients.
Most if not all hospitals in Virginia have contracts with nursing homes and also recommend nursing home options to patients seeking one. Some, like Sentara, are vertically integrated with insurance companies that have contracts with nursing homes.
Patients, and the government, have no idea what terms their nursing home contracts specify. Perhaps they should.
Look at the calendar.Amending the state constitution to draw new congressional districts will be a drawn-out process.
by Paul Goldman
I get what Democratic Speaker Donald Scott, D-Portsmouth, wants to do. When I was Democratic Party Chair, I helped create the districts that elected the first Black member of Congress and the first female member. Partisan redistricting for sure. But that was 35 years ago. Virginians overwhelmingly voted in 2021 for non-partisan redistricting. There’s no indication they’ve had a change of heart.
Speaker Scott is thus understandably leery about being seen as reviving partisan redistricting. He and his allies have come up with a clever approach to the matter. The new Democratic plan is to use the power of partisan redistricting only in response to some other state doing it first to Virginia’s detriment. Thus, his constitutional proposal is one of the weirdest in American history.
Republicans are crying their usual crocodile tears. They would do the same power grab as Scott if they were in the majority. So, I’m not impressed by their insincere Fourth of July speeches or legal opinions from the current AG, whose grasp of constitutional law seems rather sketchy.
That being said, an honest commentator has to say the Democratic proposal is laughable as a matter of constitutional principle. What’s most amazing in this redistricting debate is the lack of understanding of the redistricting- process calendar. I think presumptive Governor Abigail Spanberger has looked at this timeline. She’s staying out of the debate for reasons which will soon be apparent from this timeline.
What am I saying, I wouldn’t want to be a Dem ever.
But right now they’re in a bind.
On one hand, Dems want to keep the government shutdown going until after Election Day. They’re counting on angry federal workers to deliver a Virginia victory. (And no, they don’t care that the workers may be out of money and ready to miss mortgage payments. Do you really think uber wealthy Democrats like Mark Warner have any idea what it’s like to struggle to pay their bills?)
On the other hand, their ridiculous chorus of Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House so this is their shutdown isn’t working.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s CNN:
🚨 BREAKING: In a huge blow to Chuck Schumer's assertion that "every day gets better for us," CNN reports that Republicans have IMPROVED their poll numbers during the shutdown while Democrats are in the WORST position they've been in 20 years.pic.twitter.com/XkVDkH6SBW
Portsmouth district leaders coordinated with campaign staff, redirected school resources, and urged teachers to attend a partisan rally with Democrats Spanberger, Hashmi and Jones on paid time.
Image credit: Restoration News
by Shelly Norden
Internal emails reveal that Portsmouth Public Schools (PPS) administrators coordinated with the Spanberger for Governor campaign to stage a political rally inside I.C. Norcom High School during school hours on Aug. 8, the first teacher workday of the year.
According to FOIA records obtained exclusively by Restoration News, the coordination diverted taxpayer-funded staff time and school resources away from instruction to support a partisan event.
Photos and social media posts from campaign operatives and union officials show Democratic candidates Abigail Spanberger, Ghazala Hashmi, and Jay Jones delivering campaign speeches attacking their opponents beneath political banners hanging in the school library.
Although division leaders later described the gathering as a closed “education roundtable,” evidence shows it was a publicly promoted political rally conducted during paid work hours inside a taxpayer-funded school.
Congested traffic on the American Legion Bridge. Photo credit: The Washington Post
by Ken Reid
I attended Gov. Youngkin’s address to the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance Friday Oct. 24 in Fairfax.
There, for the first time that I can recall, he addressed the horrendous traffic on the American legion Bridge (ALB-495) and the fact Virginia’s extension of express toll lanes to the Potomac River will be open by early February – but there will be no corresponding increase in lane capacity on the Maryland-controlled Legion Bridge and 495 Beltway and I-270 connection, called “The Split.”
That’s because Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, upon election in November 2022, announced the public-private-partnership his predecessor, Larry Hogan, worked out with former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was “not equitable.” This, despite the fact, the $6 billion project won approval from the Federal Highway Administration and Maryland Board of Public Works that very month, and the winner of the bid, Transurban, was ready to break ground to meet up with Virginia’s “495 Next” project.
The neophyte Moore, who never held elected office before, was pretty much conned by environmental groups and politicians like socialist Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich into thinking using toll lanes was bad for poor people – although they do exist on other roads in Maryland
Youngkin and his Transportation Secretary, Shep Miller, never intervened when Moore made his intentions known in December 2022, nor before March 2023 when Transurban pulled out of the project, in part because Moore denied them an extension to get things ready to build.
But at the NVTA breakfast Friday, Youngkin announced he was going to send a team of experts to Annapolis to try to convince Moore that the P3 approach is the only way to provide new capacity on 270/495. The Free State faces a $3 billion deficit due to poor fiscal policies and a loss of jobs and people, and there is not $6 billion available from the feds to build this without tolls.
“Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
That was former Delegate Jay Jones’ deep political insight, seeking to justify his assertion that the children of the Speaker of the House should die so Democrats could prevail.
Is that not exactly what Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are now putting fully into action? Which is worse, truly? A text that emerges from a fevered brain that probably (we hope) was just ugly words, or weeks and weeks of standing by as the federal government and its workforce dissolves? I submit Kaine and Warner’s actions are worse than Jones’ words.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D- VA
They are doing it to gain a victory for big government spending and the growing middle-class dependency on government financial entitlements. They are doing it, they think, to put pressure on President Trump, but they cannot be that stupid to think he really cares as he jets around the world. And they are doing it in part to help cement Abigail Spanberger’s victory and win a larger Democratic majority in the House of Delegates.
The personal pain they inflict is of no concern to them.
They are also doing this, of course, because they can. They have now voted thirteen times to directly prevent passage of a continuing resolution but are getting no more heat for it than if they were routine votes. The docile Virginia media is on their side if it covers the votes at all.
They can also do this because the toothless and feckless Republican Party poses absolutely no threat to either of them, certainly not to Warner, who is on the ballot again next year. They think they are winning this standoff. They are not. The imperial presidency of Trump and some future president with authoritarian tendencies will simply grow stronger. It is true that both sides in Congress are being blamed, but that just means Congress as an institution is losing what little respect and credibility it still had.
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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