After the Virginia Supreme Court threw out a new congressional district map that eliminated four GOP seats, progressives want to purge the court and replace it with more loyal progressives. The plan is to lower the mandatory retirement age of judges to below the youngest member of the VA Supreme Court so they can put progressive activists in to take their place.
Progressive Virginia
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Idea criticized by legal scholars
Democrats should push through legislation to lower the mandatory retirement age of Virginia Supreme Court in order to remove justices who ruled a gerrymandered map unconstitutional, a “democracy” scholar argued.
Quinn Yeargain, who uses “they/them/theirs” pronouns and whose real name is Tyler, made the argument on Saturday. Yeargain is the “1855 Professor of Law of Democracy” at Michigan State University, according to the scholar’s faculty website.
Writing at Downballot, Yeargain said Democrats should lower the retirement age to 54, outwardly saying the goal would be to remove the youngest justice who made what the professor considers the wrong decision.
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Democrats want to rewrite the Virginia Constitution because the State Supreme Court rejected their unconstitutional maps.
The New York Times reports that Hakeem Jeffries and top Democrats in D.C. are considering asking Virginia legislators and Governor Spanberger to pass legislation to “retire” the members of the Supreme Court and then replace them en masse.
New York Times: The conversation reflected the desperation and fury that have gripped the party after the state Supreme Court struck down a favorable map that had been ratified by voters. The most dramatic idea they discussed — which would involve an unusual gambit to replace the entire state Supreme Court, with a goal of reinstating their gerrymandered map — drew mixed reactions on the call, said the people, and it was not clear that it would even be viable, or palatable to Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly. (NYT).
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A school district in Virginia is using a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) filter on its use of generative AI (GenAI) in schools to inject a race-focused lens into teacher and administrative decision-making.
According to documents obtained by Defending Education, Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS), a far-left school district surrounding Charlottesville, and which includes Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, has built its GenAI policy based around its “anti-racism” policy, which is inherently discriminatory against white students in favor of other races.
“While schools should engage in good judgement and do their due diligence when it comes to Artificial Intelligence integration, the fact that the district is vetting AI based on its compliance with diversity, equity, and inclusion should be concerning for parents,” Rhyen Staley, Director of Research at Defending Education, told The Federalist. “By only allowing the use of AI and information sources that reflect a leftwing political bias, district administrators are setting a precedent that is harmful to the learning process and neutrality of schools.”
The woman behind the Virginia special election to effectively eliminate 4 GOP U.S. House seats is now under FBI investigation. Virginia’s State Senator L. Louise Lucas saw her offices raided, along with other businesses connected to her.
So far, only anonymous sources are cited as claiming this is connected to a corruption investigation directly linked to her. She is considered the main driver of the Virginia gerrymander election plan that is currently under legal scrutiny.
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- Justice Department launches civil rights probe into prosecutor in Virginia The Washington Post
- Dept. of Justice investigating Fairfax County’s top attorney over handling of cases involving immigrants WTOP
- DOJ probes Fairfax prosecutor over alleged bias involving undocumented immigrants FOX 5 DC
- Justice Department launches investigation in Fairfax County prosecutor Steve Descano WJLA
- BREAKING: DOJ investigating Fairfax prosecutor over policy on immigrant defendants FFXnow
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Virginia Democrats are clearly panicking. Rachael Bade, co-host of The Huddle, elaborated on what former Democratic Party operative and fellow co-host Dan Turrentine mentioned this week about the fate of the Old Dominion’s new congressional map. It grants Democrats a 10-1 advantage, but the state Supreme Court refused to dismiss the challenge to the map, setting the stage for serious intra-party battles.
The legal warnings were reportedly repeated endlessly, but to no effect. Now, Democratic leaders at both the Virginia and national levels could face a heavy setback if the maps are invalidated. Bade outlined the criteria the court could use to strike down the maps. Sure, the map might get approved, but if the Virginia Supreme Court sides with just one of these points, the map is cooked:
AND THE KNIVES ARE OUT FOR SOME BIG NAMES. Per Dan’s reporting, Governor ABIGAIL SPANBERGER’s staff is quietly sniping at state Senate majority leader SCOTT SUROVELL and state Senate kingmaker LOUISE LUCAS — two lawmakers who pushed back hardest on the legal warnings last fall.
[…]
If this effort goes down, those quotes won’t age well. “People are lining up behind the scenes to go public, I think, very quickly if this does not go through,” Dan foreshadowed.
BUT HERE’S THE THING — Pointing fingers won’t let Spanberger off the hook, which we discussed at length on the show. Yes, she may have privately raised concerns about the effort early on. But she’s the one in the ads. She’s the face of this thing. As our other co-host SEAN SPICER put it bluntly: “She ate the political cookie on this one.”
The other name in the crosshairs if this goes down? House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES. Dan is already hearing from some Virginia Dems who say the Democratic leader pushed too hard despite legal concerns. (Though, let’s be fair to Jeffries — he would have been slammed by the party if he hadn’t leaned in, and his team would likely wear such criticism as a badge of honor.)
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Democrats hope gerrymandering Virginia will give them the edge they need to win back the House. But Tuesday’s special election is proving more competitive than they’d like.
Tight polling and concerns over voter turnout in an atypical April election have many Democratic party strategists and officials preparing for a close finish.
“I always thought this campaign would be close [and] 24 hours out, I believe that to be the case,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said on Monday, before the final day of voting.
“Anytime you’re on the ‘yes’ side of a referendum, you’ve got the burden of proof,” he added. “It doesn’t matter what the referendum is, but anytime you’re arguing for ‘yes,’ the other side is going to be arguing for the status quo.”
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Day after day, new Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and her fellow Democrats demonstrate how much of their agenda is simply about securing power.
Spanberger signed a bill Monday that added the Commonwealth of Virginia to the National Popular Vote Compact, which is a misguided and downright unconstitutional attempt to get around the Electoral College in presidential elections.
The compact, which has now enlisted 18 states and the District of Columbia, would make the state’s Electoral College votes be whatever the national popular vote is, potentially nullifying democracy in the name of democracy.
I’d like to note that this move is awful for several reasons, the first one being that the National Popular Vote idea is a toxic one that undermines America’s federal, constitutional system.
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Law-abiding citizens of Virginia have been on pins and needles these past few days waiting to see how Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) would handle a bill that had been sitting on her desk for a month that would ban the purchase of certain “assault firearms.”
There was a hard deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday for her to take action. She had several options: sign it, veto it, send it back to the General Assembly with suggested amendments, or simply do nothing, which would allow it to become law without her signature.
Considering “Grabby Abby” Spanberger had happily voted in favor of assault weapons bans during her time in Congress, it seemed likely that she wound ink this bill into law without a second thought. However, there was one big mitigating factor hanging over her: the April 21 referendum on whether or not to allow Virginia Democrats to gerrymander Republicans out of four of the five congressional seats they currently hold – and some signs are pointing to the vote not going the Democrats’ way.
Gun Store Sales Surge As Virginians Try to Beat New Gun Controls– www.breitbart.com
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Gun stores in Virginia are seeing sales surge as residents of the state buy up firearms and ammo trying to beat the effective dates of new gun controls.
The Fauquier Times noted, “Early indicators suggest Virginians are responding to a slate of proposed gun-control legislation with a noticeable spike in firearm background checks — a sign that gun sales are on the rise.”
As Virginia voters take part in a closely contested redistricting referendum, Gov. Abigail Spanberger is heading toward the final tally with historically low approval numbers.
For the first time since the 1990s, a sitting Virginia governor is polling below historical norms.
According to Washington Post polling, Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47%—13 points lower than the average approval rating for Virginia governors and below a majority.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was the moderate democrat who was going to change the Democrat Party. She was such a moderate; not only was her being a moderate reported by the legacy media, but it was also fact-checked by independent fact-checkers. Her getting elected was a model for how Democrats are going to win the midterms by running as moderates. It’s why she gave the response to Trump’s State of the Union.
The rub is that, according to a recent Washington Post poll, she is the least popular Virginia governor of the 21st century. Because — and this is key — like most Democrats who claim to be moderate, it’s all malarky. As soon as she was sworn in, her true socialist colors shone through. And it would appear voters are having buyer’s remorse.
Dude. It’s been less than three months. Yet, here we are.
Like all “moderate” democrats before her, she is a lying liar who lies, and once getting elected, turned hard left. Boys are going back to the girls’ bathrooms and stealing their sports scholarships. A ton of taxes are on the table to make the middle class less affordable while giving elected officials a pay raise. And relevant to our current political comment, she turned Virginia into a sanctuary state by ending all cooperation with ICE. I believe that was the literal first thing she did.
The leftists who now control Virginia’s government desperately want you to believe that ripping up a bipartisan congressional map mid-decade for naked political advantage is fair. They insist as much in the language of the absurd referendum question before the commonwealth’s voters next month.
“Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?” the ballot asks.
In a stunning turn of events, Virginia Democrats are discovering that their effort to gerrymander their state could blow up in their faces.
The April 21 special election referendum is one month away, and Democrats who once crusaded against partisan map-rigging are sweating bullets, because it looks as if voters won’t approve their plan to eliminate four Republican-held seats and make Virginia one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country. They assumed this would be easy.
Even Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed on to the effort, despite her past opposition to gerrymandering. Back in 2019, she said, “gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy, and it weakens the individual voices that form our electorates,” and insisted that “opposing gerrymandering should be a bipartisan priority.”
That quote hasn’t aged particularly well, and it could prove to be her major defeat as governor.
“Some supporters of the Virginia referendum acknowledge the challenge of convincing voters to back a gerrymandered map when Democrats, who several years ago backed the formation of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, have criticized Republicans for similar moves,” NBC News reports. “Virginia voters are also not accustomed to going to the polls in April, when Democrats scheduled the special election, making turnout particularly unpredictable.”
Virginia Democrats have pushed through a sweeping package of gun control legislation that represents a major rollback of Second Amendment protections for millions of law-abiding citizens.
In just 60 days, the Virginia General Assembly advanced more than a dozen anti-gun measures, including SB 749 and HB 217.
The two identical bills target commonly owned semi-automatic firearms.
The legislation now sits on the desk of Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), who has already indicated she will sign the measures into law.