virginia Archives

Tuesday

May 5, 2026

Cockburn

Does Abigail Spanberger want you to be fat and crazy?

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis coined the phrase “laboratories of democracy” to describe how individual states could act as test cases for different policies and ideas. Judging by its recent track record, Virginia aspires to be the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In November, voters of the Commonwealth elected Governor Abigail Spanberger – a so-called “Blue Dog Democrat” who used to serve in the CIA and railed against socialism and calls to “defund the police” after the Democrats underperformed in the 2020 elections. Virginia Democrats also retained control of the state’s Senate and House. Since then, Spanberger and her colleagues in Richmond have pushed through a controversial redistricting map which would

Wednesday

April 22, 2026

Jacob Heilbrunn

Virginia referendum loss adds to Trump’s woes

In 2020 Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Virginia twice since William Howard Taft. Then in 2024 Trump lost once more, this time to Kamala Harris. Now he has in effect lost it a fourth time as Virginia voters approved on Tuesday a fiercely contested referendum redrawing congressional districts to favor Democratic congressional candidates in the 2026 midterm elections. “This is really a country election. The whole country is watching,” Trump said. If so, it watched Trump suffer a major blow – one that will prompt renewed questions about his political acuity and judgment. It was Trump, after all, who kicked off the spate of gerrymandering in August 2025 by demanding that Texas Republicans engage in geographic contortions to deprive Democrats,

Sunday

March 15, 2026

Ben Clerkin

Muzzleloader season

Climbing into the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia with a muzzleloader slung over my shoulder was a journey back in time. This was the gun that the colony’s first settlers used when they too trod the same ground 400 years ago to hunt deer and bear. It helped tame the state and then the entire country. As I pushed my way through undergrowth at the base of the mountain range by the light of the moon at 5 a.m. on a bitingly cold and bitter January morning, unseen branches and briars clawed at my face in the dark. This was the last day of the hunting season that had been