At a jam-packed meeting last week, the George Mason University Board of Visitors received a briefing from Sharnnia Artis, the university’s former vice president for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, on how the university is complying with a Trump administration mandate to dismantle DEI and racial preferences.
For starters, Artis has a new title — vice president for access, compliance and community.
And she runs the same office as before, but it has been renamed the Office of Access, Compliance, and Community.
It’s apparent that GMU has made only superficial changes to DEI. What was refreshing about the GMU board meeting, however, is that it was held in open session — in marked contrast to the University of Virginia, where Board of Visitors deliberations have been held in closed session and veiled from the public. UVA President Jim Ryan submitted a written report to the Board, but that has been withheld from the public as well.
These happy, smiling people must be Democrats. I asked Bing Image Creator to generate an image from the words “car tax” and this is what it gave me. — JAB
by Victoria Manning
Virginians pay an average of $1,139 in annual property taxes just to own a car — the highest in the nation. In the 2025 legislative session, Republicans proposed providing car tax relief to low-income families, but Democrats killed the bill — just as they’ve repeatedly killed Republican bills that would provide tax relief for Virginians.
Democrat Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell called Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) proposal for car tax relief “a zombie gimmick that got rejected in the 90s.”
Democrats seem to forget the history of the issue, which heavily favors Republicans. In 1997, Jim Gilmore (R) was elected governor on a platform of getting rid of the car tax. Gilmore was able to get legislation passed in his first year to phase out the tax over five years. Then came Democrat Gov. Mark Warner in 2002, who immediately froze the car tax relief at 70 percent and then further eroded the phase-out plan into what remains in place today.
The Democrat legislation governing the car tax is confusing, and perhaps intentionally so. As an educated Virginian, I’ve never quite understood how that monstrous bill is configured that arrives in my mailbox every year. Here is what I’ve discovered.
School bus? Storage battery? No, a “virtual power plant.”
By Steve Haner,
With one exception, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has now vetoed the contested energy bills that he sought to amend at the 2025 General Assembly’s reconvened session last month. The rejection of his amendments or substitutes gave him a final opportunity for a full veto of the legislation.
Friday night was his deadline for decisions. His overall number of 2025 vetoes reached 196, falling a bit short of the 201 vetoes he applied to the 2024 General Assembly’s outcome. The media coverage of his active veto pen focuses on the unprecedented number of bills he rejected, never on how liberal, expensive, or unrealistic the vetoed bills were.
The list of vetoed energy bills from 2025, usually passed with unanimous Democratic votes, is a prediction of Virginia’s possible future, depending on the November election. The Democratic nominee to replace Youngkin would likely have signed all or at least most of them.
Youngkin rejected the two bills that would have mandated a massive expansion of utility-scale battery installations, House Bill 2537 and Senate Bill 1394. His proposed substitute for them basically repealed the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), a laudable goal, but the Democrats in the majority in both chambers remain committed to killing hydrocarbon-based electricity.
In Judea, the land of the Jews, the Passover festival is over, and pilgrims to the great temple in Jerusalem are returning to their homes. For Nicolaus, advisor to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, it has been a tumultuous week. A charismatic miracle worker from Galilee — Jesus of Nazareth — had stirred up the people against the temple priests. Nicolaus took part in his trial before Pontius Pilate, witnessed his crucifixion, and saw to it that he was laid to rest in a tomb outside the city walls.
Before he can start his journey home, though, Nicolaus receives startling news: the body of Jesus is missing!
To all appearances, someone has stolen the corpse in violation of imperial decree. Hopeful that the theft can be pinned on the high priests who had made his rule a misery, Pilate orders his aide to stay behind and find proof of their complicity.
So begins the The Mystery of the Empty Tomb. In this novel by James A. Bacon, Jr., Nicolaus delves into Jewish society under Roman rule: a realm peopled by princes, prophets, priests… mystics, magicians, messiahs… aristocratic Sadducees, populist Pharisees, and militant Zealots. As he doggedly follows the evidence wherever it takes him, Nicodemus uncovers the shocking truth that no one wants to hear.
When illegal immigrants are convicted of crimes in the United States, some might ask, why deport them? Why not keep them in American jails and prisons?
We just got an answer.
Six Salvadoran inmates of the Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap injured five correctional offers in a premeditated attack Friday morning. According to the Department of Corrections (DOC) press release, three prison guards were stabbed.
Five of the six inmates involved in the attack are confirmed MS-13 gang members from El Salvador and were in the country illegally. Each has been convicted of violent crimes such as aggravated murder, first and second-degree murder, and rape. The sixth alleged assailant, who is from the United States, is a confirmed member of the Sureno 13 gang and is serving a sentence for second degree murder.
Five officers received medical treatment. Three have been discharged; two were admitted to the hospital and are in stable condition.
“Five of the individuals responsible for this senseless attack should never have been in this country in the first place,” said DOC Director Chad Dotson. “Every single day, our officers put their lives on the line to ensure public safety for the more than 8.8 million people across the Commonwealth. This attack is an example of the dangers they face when they show up to work every day.”
The following popped up in my inbox about two weeks ago when I was badly distracted by the canals and stroopwafels and bicycle frenzy of Amsterdam. But it would be wrong to just delete it without having a bit of fun. The italicized text below is from our friends at Clean Virginia.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Kendl Kobbervig, Clean Virginia Communications Director [email protected] | (608) 575-8798
April 17, 2025
Clean Virginia Calls Out Winsome Earle-Sears for Accepting Massive $50,000 Donation from Dominion Energy as Virginians Face Skyrocketing Electric Bills. Abigail Spanberger and Jay Jones’ Refusal to Take Utility Money Highlights Stark Choice for Voters.
Charlottesville, VA — Clean Virginia today criticized gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears for accepting a $50,000 campaign contribution from Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electric utility monopoly, as revealed in April 15 campaign finance reports. The donation brings Earle-Sears’ lifetime total from Dominion to a staggering $226,000.
Staggering? No, $226,000 (if that is correct) is not staggering. You want staggering, check out these other Dominion giving totals from the Virginia Public Access Project, the source Clean Virginia cited:
That puts Speaker Scott and his personal political action committee combined in the almost $2.4 million range. That is beyond staggering, it is disturbing. The release continues:
The push is on around Virginia and the U.S. as a whole to eliminate Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in higher education. The first line of defense among DEI preservationists is to give new titles to employees, rename departments, and shuffle around boxes on the org chart. Advocates of dismantling DEI content say such an exercise is disingenuous. There’s more to DEI than that. But what, exactly?
Any discussion quickly breaks down in arguments over semantics. Bureaucrat X, we hear, engages in “community outreach,” not DEI. Apparatchik Y runs a program ensuring that members of disadvantaged groups feel a sense of “belonging.” Functionary Z oversees programs for dormitory residents that teach them about their “identity.”
DEI means whatever the people running universities want it to mean, and it excludes whatever they want to exclude.
In 2023 University of Virginia President Jim Ryan defined DEI as equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. And he couldn’t understand how anyone could think otherwise.
“I have no idea where this notion came from, but it ought to be rejected out of hand,” he wrote in an essay published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “I know of no college that guarantees equal outcomes. A more accurate and appropriate definition of equity is an effort to ensure equal opportunity, not equal results.”
The term “equal opportunity,” he asserted, “recognizes that not everyone starts in the same place or is in the same circumstances, so treating people exactly alike is not always fair — and not always consistent with providing equal opportunities. How far a college goes to remove barriers to success will always be subject to debate, but the basic idea should not be controversial.”
“Removing barriers to success” is not terribly controversial. But it bears little resemblance to how DEI is actually practiced at the University of Virginia — or any other public university in Virginia. DEI is the name given to a bureaucratic apparatus charged with executing a social-justice philosophy inspired by critical theory and the oppressor-oppressed paradigm. If you remove the apparatus, the underlying philosophy remains, and the practices continue.
Our three-year respite from the radical tyranny of Democrat party rule could soon be over. There was a chance we could keep freedom alive in the upcoming statewide elections. All the party and its candidates had to do was join together to deliver a coherent message and remind voters of what it was like when Democrats ran the show.
Unfortunately, with victory in their sites, the GOP – led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin – formed a circular firing squad last week and began shooting at each other. If Winsome Earle-Sears and Jason Miyares don’t reach out and hold hands with running mate John Reid the chances of any of the three winning in November is greatly diminished.
The campaigns already appeared to be off to a sluggish start, but when Youngkin phoned lieutenant governor candidate John Reid last Friday to ask him to get out of the race over a couple of photos of him at a drag show (he wasn’t IN drag, he was merely there) and a racy Tumblr account that Reid insists was not his, Virginia’s top Republican stuck a stick in the spokes of the statewide campaign.
A rare misstep from this governor, who reportedly uncoupled Thursday from the advisor that is being blamed for the Reid phone call.
While prominent members of the GOP stuck their fingers in the air before deciding if they’d support the openly gay Reid, his running mates appeared to abandon him.
Sears eventually gave a tepid endorsement on Wednesday, saying she supported “the ticket” and that they each have their own races to run.
Miyares has been mum.
News flash: If they’re each running their own races, they will lose.
And now for a piece of good news! Fentanyl-related deaths in Virginia declined 44% in 2024 compared to the year before, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and touted by the Youngkin administration.
Better yet, that was the best year-to-year performance of any state in the country. Nationally, drug overdose deaths (that’s all deaths, not just fentanyl-related) declined only 26.5% between November 2023 and November 2024, according to CDC data. In Virginia, that amounts to more than 1,000 fewer deaths.
Understandably, Governor Glenn Youngkin is crowing about this positive development — a ray of sunlight in an otherwise dark and dreary sky of social and moral turmoil.
“Overdose deaths skyrocketed across America and in Virginia driven primarily by illicit fentanyl flowing across our southern border,” said Youngkin yesterday in a press release. “With an average of five dying Virginians each day, in 2022 we launched a comprehensive effort to stop the scourge of fentanyl, it’s working, and Virginia is leading.”
All the business about John Reid, the Republican candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor – who did what and why — has made for a strange week.
There’s a sense (a little more than that, actually) that things said, asserted and claimed may suffer from rebuttal.
These would be the same things said, asserted and claimed that a confused collection of commentators swallowed whole.
What I mean is that they went full “hook, line and sinker” — and, wow, why do that?
Does it matter who runs for lieutenant governor? In the long run, yes. You’re giving that person a platform to run for governor.
But will it matter to the outcome this fall? Not likely.
John Reid has long lived by his wits, never borne any public responsibility for anything and, for the sake of holding a part-time job presiding over the Virginia Senate, put his vocal cords to full use over the last seven days. If he’s now caught out for having been creative with the facts, he will end being a hard right-wing, gay candidate for lieutenant governor and that’s all.
The only thing wrong with the interaction between John Reid and Governor Glenn Youngkin, addressing valid questions about his viability as a candidate for lieutenant governor, is when it happened. It should have happened last year, while Reid was just a potential candidate, before he had quit his day job to run, and before he was nominated by default when the other guy had to drop out.
Whatever photos or text that appeared on social media attributed to Reid, correctly or incorrectly, have been posted for years. Nobody looked. Nobody asked until it was inevitably going to be perceived as a late hour “gotcha.” These are rookie mistakes on both sides, Reid’s and Youngkin’s.
Add to that leaking the contents of the conversation, or allowing them to be leaked, as a sign of poor judgment. That was intentional on somebody’s part.
The election is still six months away, but Reid’s rhetoric at a rally Wednesday night indicates he will continue to play the victim card and attack the “Richmond Swamp,” meaning his own governor. He is driving even deeper the wedge between himself and a governor who won an improbable victory in 2021, a lightning strike that needs to be repeated.
Forcing voters to choose between himself and Youngkin is another terrible rookie mistake. “Four More Years!” is the only political tack I see working this year.
Having Governor Glenn Youngkin tell him to drop out of the race for lieutenant governor might have been the best thing that happened to John Reid’s election campaign. The former Richmond talk-radio host is generating more headlines and bigger crowds than ever.
People don’t normally get worked up over the race for lieutenant governor, a statewide position that has far less visibility and power than governor and attorney general. Most voters don’t even know who the candidates are.
That’s no longer an issue for Reid who, though he was well known in the Richmond area, faced a major challenge with an underfunded campaign in introducing himself to voters across the state. In stark contrast to the leftist-perpetuated stereotype of Republicans as homophobes, it turns out that most GOP activists don’t care that Reid is gay. They may not be wild about the online expression of Reid’s gay lifestyle — attending drag shows, posting images of hunky nude male models on a five-year-old social media account (which he denies doing) — but they see him as a fighter for every other issue important to conservatives.
Three weeks ago, Reid couldn’t beg, borrow or steal publicity from the legacy media. Now he’s getting more attention than he ever imagined. Surprisingly little of that attention is negative, and his larger message is getting through.
The George Mason University Board of Visitors gave economics professor Bryan Caplan the opportunity to speak at a recent board meeting. He delivered a six-minute takedown of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) that is well worth watching.
Caplan assailed DEI for its effect on free expression. DEI doctrine, which many have likened to a religion for its unfalsifiable propositions about racism, turns universities into “seminaries” expounding upon a single moral and political philosophy.
The most refreshing part of the speech was when Caplan critiqued DEI statements requiring job applicants and employees to explain how they would advance DEI goals in their teaching and community engagement.
Caplan compared the ideological commitment toward a leftist version of social justice to the notorious loyalty pledges demanded of faculty during the 1950s McCarthy-era “witch hunt.”
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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