1.) In the Richmond Times Dispatch, political scientist Mark Rozell reiterated the point I made last week that early voting appears to be more robust in Republican leaning areas. However, early voting remains lower than four years ago, which could mean less enthusiasm for both candidates. The most recent poll I could find from Christopher Newport University has V.P. Kamala Harris up by 11 points over former President Donald Trump among likely voters in Virginia. Dwayne Yancey of Cardinal News makes the interesting point that polls show the concerns of independent voters match those of Republicans and could impact the outcome in Virginia. I'll let you decide if Virginia is in play…but votes count, polls don't.
2.) Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger argued that job changing federal workers are denied their full Social Security benefits. While surely good campaign rhetoric, Andrew G. Biggs from the American Enterprise Institute wrote for our Jefferson Journal that her argument fails to understand how Social Security works and her proposed fix would unfairly give job switchers funds they did not earn. Worse, her proposal would bankrupt Social Security almost a year earlier for everyone. Spanberger's bill shows a lack of leadership on an important issue to all Virginians.
3.) On "car tax day," our Kimberly Pinter and Callahan Burton wrote about the inconsistent way the car tax is calculated, how lower income areas pay higher effective car tax rates, and how former Governor Gilmore's effort to end the car tax needs to happen.
4.) Jeff Schapiro of the Richmond Times Dispatch joined our call for a serious fix of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA or Metro), but opted to support a new regional government with taxing authority to provide Metro with needed funds. The truth is WMATA is financially broken -- and just reported that 70 percent of its bus riders don't even pay their fare! Why should taxes from families in downstate Virginia bail out this system, when riders aren't even willing to pay?
5.) Governor Youngkin is looking into a National Review report that the intellectual property behind the once highly successful Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has been sold to a Chinese Communist Party entity who has copied the school's curriculum, syllabi, and floor plans to create twenty "Thomas Schools" in China. The $3.6 million payment from China was marked as "donations" -- but evidence suggests the payments were contractual to secure rights to clone the schools.
6.) Sadly, academic excellence has been slipping at Thomas Jefferson High School, as reported by James Bacon. Since 2018-19 SOL advanced pass rates have fallen by 43% in math and 48.8% in science. The number of National Merit semifinalists has fallen from 157 in 2020 to 81 for 2025. Thomas Jefferson High School has dropped from being the top high school in the country, to now being ranked 14th. My guess is the CCP did not purchase TJ's new relaxed admissions criteria.
7.) Governor Youngkin and the Board of Elections are caught between a rock and a hard place, with Republicans saying that Youngkin's Executive Order 35, which purged 6,303 non-citizen from the voting rolls, is not enough, while Democrats and the DOJ have filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria to stop any more changes in the voter rolls. Governor Youngkin has been expressing concerns about the threat to democracy posed by non-citizen voting. I get plenty of mail on both sides of this debate whenever I state my belief that Virginia's elections have been and remain secure. I do think mail in voting, extended early voting, and the death of in-person "day of voting" increases risk. But, the real threat to fair elections is our biased media…and the growth of censorship by social media moguls.
8.) A new report on the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program puts this program that pays tuition for dependents of service members killed during service back in the lap of the General Assembly only months after they balked on much needed changes to this program last session. The chart below shows that as the General Assembly expanded the definition of disability, relaxed the residency rules, included the dependents of all members who died during military service instead of just those who died in combat, the size of this program has exploded. Virginia has one of the most generous programs for Gold Star families and the General Assembly and Governor need to muster the political courage to make reforms as suggested in this report or this program will continue to grow beyond what the Commonwealth can afford. | 
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