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Tag: abigail spanberger

  • Who has Virginia’s Governor-elect appointed to her cabinet? – WTOP News

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    Nonetheless, experts said the appointments suggest Spanberger will begin working quickly once she takes office, and her focus, as it was during the campaign cycle, will be affordability.

    With her inauguration scheduled for next weekend, Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger has been filling out her cabinet.

    The selections, which range from experts who served under previous governors to state lawmakers, still have to be approved by the General Assembly.

    Nonetheless, experts said the appointments suggest Spanberger will begin working quickly once she takes office, and her focus, as it was during the campaign cycle, will be affordability.

    “You do see a range of representation across the geographical and political diversity of Virginia,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington. “You see a vision that is consistent with the centrist messaging of the campaign.”

    So who has Spanberger appointed so far?

    Spanberger’s appointees

    Marvin Figueroa, health and human resources secretary

    Virginia’s HHR secretary has oversight of 12 state agencies.

    Figueroa is vice president at BGR Group, working on state and federal health policy. He was once health policy adviser to Sen. Mark Warner and served as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

    Figueroa, who lives in Arlington, was deputy secretary of health and human resources under former Gov. Ralph Northam.

    In a statement, he said the challenges Virginians are facing “are real. Families are feeling the strain of rising costs, uneven access to care and systems that are often too hard to navigate.”

    Katie Frazier, secretary of agriculture and forestry

    Since 2018, Frazier has worked as the chief brand officer for Farm Credit of the Virginias, which helps provide financing for equipment, livestock, land purchases and farm and country home loans, according to its website. In that role, she leads marketing, education, legislative and advocacy efforts, according to a news release.

    Frazier previously worked as the executive director of the Virginia Agribusiness Council, a nonprofit trade group in Richmond.

    Frazier has worked on various issues, including soil and water conservation and workforce development, at the state and federal levels, according to a news release announcing her appointment.

    “Governor-elect Spanberger has been a steadfast champion and supporter of agriculture and forestry, a commitment that began during her time in Congress serving on the House Agriculture Committee,” Frazier said in a statement. “I look forward to collaborating with the Spanberger Administration, the General Assembly, and our partners to continue advancing a vision of economic growth and prosperity for our farmers, foresters, and agribusinesses.”

    Stanley Meador, secretary of public safety and homeland security

    Meador has worked in law enforcement for almost three decades, starting as a special agent with Virginia’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority in 1997.

    He was part of the response to the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, and earned a Virginia “Declaration of Valor” for his work on that day.

    Then, Meador started a career with the FBI as a special agent, working in various field offices across the country. In 2021, Meador became special agent in charge at the FBI’s Richmond Field Office, tasked with oversight of national security and criminal investigations.

    Meador earned an undergraduate degree from Roanoke College and a master’s from American University in D.C.

    “Throughout my career, I have been committed to protecting our communities and strengthening the partnerships that keep them safe,” Meador said in a statement. “As a native Virginian, I look forward to supporting Governor-elect Spanberger’s vision with the same dedication, integrity, and commitment that have guided my service for nearly three decades.”

    Nick Donohue, secretary of transportation

    Donohue founded Transportation and Infrastructure Strategies LLC, advising public and private sector clients on various issues. He’s worked under three Virginia governors, working with state lawmakers to create the Interstate 81 Corridor Improvement Program and “secure the first dedicated capital funding for WMATA,” according to a news release.

    Donohue was involved with the Transforming Rail in Virginia initiative, helping to increase Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express service across the state. He also helped with the development of SMART SCALE, Virginia’s project prioritization process.

    David Ramadan, a former House of Delegates member now a professor of practice at George Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government, said Donohue is “probably the foremost person who knows everything there is to know about transportation in Virginia.”

    Candi Mundon King, secretary of the commonwealth

    Mundon King is one of several state lawmakers Spanberger has appointed to her cabinet. She’s served Virginia’s 23rd district in the House of Delegates since 2021, representing parts of Prince William and Stafford counties.

    She chairs the House Committee on Counties, Cities and Towns and has prioritized getting pay raises for teachers, protecting human trafficking victims and ensuring home health care workers get paid sick leave.

    Before Mundon King was elected to office, she worked at public policy and philanthropy organizations, including the Gates Foundation and CARE.

    Mundon King was born and raised in Portsmouth and lives in Dumfries.

    Ramadan told WTOP adding cabinet members from the General Assembly will help Spanberger get her agenda passed.

    “They are independent bodies with minds of their own and priorities of their own, despite the cooperation and coordination with the leadership,” said Ramadan, a former delegate. “Therefore, having members of your cabinet and sub cabinet positions of people that know the process, know the people in the House and the Senate have the relationships, is a must.”

    Army Maj. Gen. Timothy Williams

    Williams worked under three Virginia governors as adjutant general of the state for nine years. In 2023, he retired, after 38 years working with the Army.

    In his role as adjutant general, Williams headed Virginia’s Department of Military Affairs, which supports the Army National Guard, Air National Guard and Defense Force.

    Williams led the Guard through the pandemic, helping with testing and vaccines.

    Since his retirement, Williams has worked as adviser to the Chief of National Guard Bureau on intergovernmental affairs.

    Williams has served at every level of the military.

    “I share Governor-elect Spanberger’s focus on making sure Virginia communities have the resources they need to keep their citizens safe, so we will make sure the Virginia National Guard is always ready and always there to rapidly respond as part of Virginia’s multi-agency team to provide capabilities when Virginians are impacted by severe weather or a security threat,” Williams said in a statement.

    Mark Sickles, secretary of finance

    Sickles has represented part of Fairfax County in Virginia’s House for over two decades. He’s currently the chair of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, and he has chaired the House Health and Human Services Committee since 2004.

    During his time in office, Sickles has prioritized investing in libraries, protecting endangered species and led the transition from Healthcare.gov to Virginia’s Health Insurance Exchange.

    Ramadan, with George Mason, said Sickles was vice chair of appropriations in the House, and “knows everything there is to know about the budget.”

    Traci Deshazor, secretary of administration

    Deshazor worked as deputy secretary of the commonwealth under former governors Ralph Northam and Terry McAuliffe. In that role, she helped with clemency and restoring civil and voting rights of over 300,000 Virginians.

    Locally, Deshazor worked as deputy chief administrative officer for human services in the City of Richmond. During that stint, she created a new city agency, the Department of Neighborhood and Community Services, and created the Office of Homeless Services and Office of Neighborhood and Community Services.

    Deshazor also worked as the first chief equity officer for the City of Richmond.

    “As secretary of administration, I will bring a people-first, outcomes-driven approach to strengthening Virginia’s operations, promoting transparency, and strengthening trust in government,” Deshazor said.

    Jessica Looman, secretary of labor

    Former President Joe Biden appointed Looman to serve as administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, and she led the agency from 2021 to 2025.

    She’s previously worked as commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Commerce, with oversight of insurance and financial institution regulation.

    Looman worked as a senior fellow at the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative, crafting ways to help state and local governments protect workers’ rights and offer insight on child labor and interstate collaboration.

    “I share Governor-elect Spanberger’s vision that both investing in the creation of good jobs and protecting workers are essential to sustaining the Commonwealth’s economic growth and shared prosperity,” Looman said.

    Jeffery Smith, secretary of education

    Smith has over a decade of experience as a superintendent, leading Hampton City schools for eight years and Town of West Point schools for seven.

    His career has featured over 30 years in public school education, and during his tenure, Hampton City schools improved graduation rates and reported declines in dropout rates.

    Smith is currently the executive director and CEO of the Virginia Air and Space Science Center.

    In an interview with WTOP, Spanberger said Smith has “done innovative, really thoughtful things in the communities that he has served. And so I look forward to seeing the perspective that he brings to the secretariat as a whole.”

    Sesha Joi Moon, chief diversity officer

    Moon worked as chief diversity officer of the U.S. House of Representatives during the 117th and 118th Congresses, heading the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

    She previously served as chief impact officer with Girl Scouts USA and chief diversity officer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

    Moon lives in Fairfax but is from Richmond.

    “As a proud Virginia native, I look forward to joining the cabinet of Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger as her historic administration works to advance a future in which all Virginians have access to opportunity — to include residents from some of the hardest-to-reach communities throughout the Commonwealth,” Moon said in a statement.

    Matt McGuire, counsel to the governor

    McGuire has worked in private practice and academia, and worked as principal deputy solicitor general and executive division counsel under former Attorney General Mark Herring.

    He co-taught a seminar at the University of Richmond’s law school and has argued cases at each level of the federal and Virginia court systems and the U.S. Supreme Court.

    “I’ll draw on my extensive experience with public law issues, my global background in business and technology matters as well as litigation to ensure the Governor-elect’s crucial policies will benefit Virginians for years to come,” McGuire said in a statement.

    David Bulova, secretary of natural and historic resources

    Bulova has been a delegate in Virginia’s House, representing parts of Fairfax County and the City of Fairfax, since he was first elected in 2005.

    He is chair of the General Laws Committee and the Commerce, Agriculture and Natural Resources subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

    Bulova is on the Chesapeake Bay Commission and has focused on legislation and funding for conservation and restoration of Virginia’s natural resources.

    “I am grateful for the opportunity to work with our Governor-elect, the General Assembly, and the many partners that work hard every day to fulfill the promise outlined in Virginia’s constitution ‘to protect its atmosphere, lands, and waters from pollution, impairment, or destruction, for the benefit, enjoyment, and general welfare of the people of the Commonwealth,” Bulova said in a statement.

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    Scott Gelman

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  • How to get tickets for Abigail Spanberger’s inauguration in January – WTOP News

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    The inauguration ceremony will be held Saturday, Jan. 17 at noon on the South Portico of the Virginia State Capitol Building in Richmond.

    Viewing the inauguration of Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger will be a right reserved for winners of a ticket lottery, her inaugural committee announced Friday.

    The inauguration ceremony will be held Saturday, Jan. 17 at noon on the South Portico of the Virginia State Capitol Building in Richmond. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required due to limited seating.

    Those who would like to attend can enter the ticket lottery online, and will be asked to provide their name, phone number, email and mailing address.

    “We will welcome as many Virginians as possible to Capitol Square on January 17,” Spanberger said in a news release. “I am so grateful for the excitement, support, and visions for our future that Virginians across the Commonwealth have shared with me over the last several weeks. I encourage anyone who hopes to celebrate with us next month to enter our ticket lottery.”

    The theme for the inauguration is “United for Virginia’s Future,” which Spanberger’s office said “reflects the collective pride and common goals that will move the Commonwealth forward.”

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Thomas Robertson

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  • U.S. Capitol replaces statue of Robert E. Lee with teen civil rights icon Barbara Rose Johns

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    The U.S. Capitol on Tuesday began displaying a statue of a teenaged Barbara Rose Johns as she protested poor conditions at her segregated Virginia high school, a pointed replacement for a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed several years ago.

    An unveiling ceremony of the statue representing Virginia in the Capitol took place in Emancipation Hall, featuring Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s congressional delegation and Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger.

    Johnson said more than 200 members of Johns’ family were on hand, listening on as the ceremony included renditions of “How Great Thou Art,” “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” and “Total Praise” performed by the Eastern Senior High School choir from Washington.

    “We are here to honor one of America’s true trailblazers, a woman who embodied the essence of the American spirit in her fight for liberty and justice and equal treatment under the law, the indomitable Barbara Rose Johns,” Johnson said.

    Johns was 16 years old in 1951 when she led a student strike for equal education at the segregated R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The protest, led by Johns and hundreds of her classmates, sought to draw attention to the crowded, rundown conditions of their school — especially when compared to all-White schools in the same area.

    The students’ cause gained the support of NAACP lawyers, who filed a lawsuit that would become one of the five cases that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in Brown v. Board of Education. The high court’s landmark 1954 decision declared “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional, finding segregated schools to be “inherently unequal.”

    Johns later married the Rev. William Powell and became Barbara Rose Johns Powell, raised five children and was a librarian in the Philadelphia Public Schools. She died at 56 in 1991.

    “She put God first in her life. She was brave, bold, determined, strong, wise, unselfish, warm and loving,” said Terry Harrison, one of her daughters.

    The statue shows the young Johns standing to the side of a lectern, holding a tattered book over her head. Its pedestal is engraved with the words, “Are we going to just accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?” It also features a quote from the Book of Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them.”

    The statue replaces one of Lee that was removed in December 2020 from the Capitol, where it had represented Virginia for 111 years. The removal occurred during a time of renewed national attention over Confederate monuments after the death of George Floyd and was relocated to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

    “The Commonwealth of Virginia will now be properly represented by an actual patriot who embodied the principle of liberty and justice for all, and not a traitor who took up arms against the United States to preserve the brutal institution of chattel slavery,” Jeffries said at the ceremony.

    Johns’ sister, Joan Johns Cobbs, read from a journal entry by Johns: “And then there were times I just prayed, ‘God, please grant us a new school, please let us have a warm place to stay where we won’t have to keep our coats on all day to stay warm. God, please help us. We are your children too.’”

    The Johns piece is part of the National Statuary Hall Collection at the Capitol, in which each state can contribute two statues. The other statue representing Virginia is of George Washington.

    National Statuary Hall displays 35 of the statues. Others are in the Crypt, the Hall of Columns and the Capitol Visitor Center. Johnson said the Johns statue will be placed in the Crypt.

    Former Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam had requested the removal of the Lee statue. In December 2020, a state commission recommended replacing Lee’s statue with a statue of Johns.

    The Johns statue, sculpted by Steven Weitzman of Maryland, received final approval from the Architect of the Capitol and the Joint Committee on the Library in July.

    Johns is also featured in a sculpture at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial outside the state Capitol in Richmond. The former high school is now a National Historic Landmark and museum.

    “It’s an incredibly profound moment, a moment to stand in a tar shack classroom with a hot potbelly stove as a heater, tar paper walls, shabby desks, right where 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns courageously organized her schoolmates and stood up to the lie — the lie was separate but equal,” Youngkin said of the museum.

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  • After years of vetoes, Virginia poised to launch adult-use cannabis market – WTOP News

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    Spanberger’s election clears the way for a regulated retail system, with legislators set to introduce a revamped bill shaped by months of hearings and equity debates.

    This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury. 

    After four years of stalled efforts and repeated vetoes from outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia lawmakers now see a clear path to finally standing up a legal adult-use cannabis market.

    During her campaign, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, elected governor two weeks ago, pledged to sign legislation establishing a regulated retail system — reversing the impasse that kept marijuana sales in limbo since Virginia legalized possession and home cultivation in 2021.

    Lawmakers and advocates say the absence of a retail structure has fueled an unregulated market increasingly dominated by illicit operators.

    At its next meeting on Dec. 2, the Joint Commission on the Future of Cannabis Sales, which the legislature created earlier this year, will roll out its finalized proposal for a retail framework it hopes the General Assembly will pass during the 2026 session. If lawmakers send the bill to Spanberger’s desk early next year, sales could begin as early as fall 2026.

    The legislation will be carried by Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, the commission’s chair, and Sens. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach. Krizek told The Mercury in an interview last week that Spanberger’s election removed the biggest roadblock lawmakers had faced to date.

    He said the outcome was “a good day for public safety and for communities disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition,” and a chance to finally direct tax revenue toward priorities such as job training and education. By contrast, he said, “It was a bad day for organized crime in the illicit cannabis market.”

    After years of pushing a bill under a governor “that was unwilling to discuss it at all and just vetoed our bill,” he said lawmakers now have the opportunity they have been waiting for.

    “We’ve got to stand up this legal marketplace sooner rather than later,” Krizek said.

    Final proposal pending

    At the December meeting, Krizek said, the commission will present a proposal that incorporates months of stakeholder testimony and adjustments intended to strengthen equity provisions and improve opportunities for small growers.

    He described the legislation as one that “addresses the historical injustice” and adds new programs to earlier drafts, including guaranteed shelf space at medical cannabis dispensaries for micro-enterprise farmers once adult-use sales begin.

    “There’s going to be a lot of new and interesting programs and good stuff in there that will help create a well-regulated market that’s going to be good for everybody,” he said.

    Krizek expects meaningful but not sweeping revisions to earlier proposals — changes “around the edges” based on feedback from stakeholders and the public.

    The extra time created by Youngkin’s opposition, he added, allowed lawmakers to refine the legislation. “The only good thing that the current governor has done for us is he has given us more time to perfect this bill,” Krizek said.

    But organized crime, Krizek said, “has had time to get a stranglehold on sales,” making it essential for the state to move quickly while still giving the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority enough time to roll out the marketplace.

    He noted that the strong election results and lessons learned from the commission’s hearings will shape the bill, and he expects those hearings to continue for at least the next two years.

    Spanberger said in an interview with The Mercury in August that she would sign the commission’s proposal.

    “I support a legal marketplace for cannabis,” she said at the time. “I want to ensure that it is fully regulated, people know what they’re buying, and revenues go towards education.”

    The commission’s summer hearings — its first round of work since its creation — included presentations on public safety, market structure, licensing and regulatory models.

    A long path to legalization

    Virginia legalized simple possession and home cultivation in 2021 under Democratic control and then-Gov. Ralph Northam. But creating a retail market required a second vote under the state’s reenactment clause.

    When Republicans took the House in 2022 and Youngkin expressed opposition to commercial marijuana sales, the process stalled. Still, lawmakers sent multiple versions of a retail bill to Youngkin, who vetoed every proposal, including the one he received earlier this year.

    With no legal retail option, unregulated storefronts and delivery services proliferated. Local officials have raised concerns about public safety and product testing, and law enforcement agencies have struggled to distinguish legal CBD products from illegal THC imports. But the refined proposal aims to create a regulated, equitable market after years of uncertainty.

    CCA launches new medical cannabis portal

    As lawmakers prepare for a broader retail system, the CCA last week rolled out a new online portal to streamline medical cannabis certification.

    “The new CCA Portal was designed with practitioners and patients in mind,” the agency said in a news release. The platform, which is mobile-friendly, “offers stronger protection for personal information, safeguards against fraud, and provides a simpler process,” while maintaining clear records of every change.

    Jamie Patten, the CCA’s acting head and chief administrative officer, called the upgrade “a major step forward for Virginia’s medical cannabis program. It’s safer, faster, and easier to use, and it helps us better protect patient information while supporting the integrity of the program.”

    Patients will now receive email instructions to view, save or print their certification for dispensary visits. Practitioners can print certifications as needed.

    Federal hemp restrictions unlikely to affect Virginia’s plans
    A continuing resolution passed by Congress last week included an agriculture appropriations bill that effectively shut down much of the U.S. hemp industry by reinstating stricter federal enforcement — a move that analysts say reverses the flexibility created under the 2018 Farm Bill.

    But Krizek said the federal action does not affect Virginia’s push for adult-use marijuana sales.

    “Our legislation is not a hemp bill,” he said. “This is creating a formalized and legal adult marijuana marketplace.”

    Cannabis equity advocates say Spanberger’s victory opens the door for stronger protections against market consolidation and more robust investments in communities disproportionately harmed by prohibition.

    Chelsea Higgs Wise, co-founder of Marijuana Justice, said the final bill should ensure fair competition by sequencing applications and limiting canopy size for pharmaceutical processors so they cannot dominate the market at launch.

    The legislation should set a uniform Jan. 1, 2027 start date, Wise said, so Virginia entrepreneurs can compete on equal footing, rather than allowing medical operators an early-sales advantage.

    She also urged lawmakers to clearly define what “equal and meaningful opportunity” means in licensing and ensure patient access is protected as the adult-use market comes online.

    Wise also called for stronger equity provisions, including updated language that explicitly acknowledges the harm of past prohibition and commits to repairing it through impact licenses, reinvestment programs and measurable small-business ownership goals.

    Lawmakers should include micro-licenses, delivery options, nursery and craft licenses, event permits, and direct-to-consumer sales opportunities for small cultivators, Wise further suggested. She supports a 10,000-plant cap to prevent consolidation by major operators and says half of the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund should go to the Equity Business Loan Fund.

    With Spanberger set to take office in January and Democrats maintaining the legislature, lawmakers say Virginia is finally positioned to finish the work that began in 2021.

    “We’re going to make some real positive progress,” Krizek said. “This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for.”

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    Diane Morris

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  • Youngkin slams Spanberger’s request to pause U.Va. president search – WTOP News

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    Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin responded directly to Abigail Spanberger with a letter saying her request to pause U.Va.’s search for a president is possibly damaging to the university.

    Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin responded directly to Abigail Spanberger in a letter, calling her request to pause the University of Virginia’s search for a president “meritless,” precipitous and possibly damaging to the university.

    The Republican governor wrote that when he spoke with Spanberger, Virginia’s Democratic governor-elect, earlier in the week, she had briefly mentioned sending a letter about the school, “but moved to a different topic so quickly that it seemed unimportant at the time.”

    Spanberger sent a letter to the university’s Board of Visitors on Wednesday, asking it to pause its search for a new president until she was sworn in and could appoint new board members.

    In his response to Spanberger, Youngkin wrote that “by acting precipitously, you may have inflicted significant damage on the university you profess to love.”

    Former university President Jim Ryan resigned during the summer over pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration and conservative critics over the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

    Spanberger said federal overreach that led to Ryan’s departure went unchallenged by the University of Virginia board.

    Youngkin, however, wrote that no Trump administration officials nor current board leadership made Ryan resign.

    In the months following his resignation, the university struck a deal with the White House to abide by guidance forbidding discrimination in admissions and hiring in order to end the Justice Department’s investigations into the school.

    “Over the past six months, the actions of the Board of Visitors have severely undermined the public’s and the University community’s confidence in the Board’s ability to govern productively, transparently, and in the best interests of the University,” Spanberger wrote in her letter Wednesday.

    In his letter to Spanberger, Youngkin questioned whether she knew the details of the settlement.

    “Had you waited until your transition team had the opportunity to learn all the facts behind this settlement, I believe you would agree with the many national experts who view it as extraordinarily fair and favorable to the University and Commonwealth,” he wrote.

    Youngkin also wrote that Spanberger’s assertion that the composition of the board is not in statutory compliance is “meritless” and has been rejected by the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

    Spanberger had written to the board that five of its members have not been confirmed by the General Assembly, and questioned the legitimacy of its search.

    “It’s dangerous to wrongfully disparage committed individuals who volunteer to serve on university boards and the serious work they do. Further, the Governor of the Commonwealth should speak thoughtfully and honor the service of those individuals,” Youngkin wrote.

    In her letter to UVA’s board, Spanberger said she’ll be ready to select appointees soon after her inauguration on Jan. 17. They are likely to be pushed through quickly by the General Assembly, as both chambers are controlled by Democrats.

    But Youngkin reminded her there’s a transition period for a reason.

    “There is just one Governor of Virginia at any time. This ensures that the Commonwealth’s operations can continue unimpeded. Communicating with state agencies or boards of visitors is confusing and is inconsistent with proven, professional protocols. And certainly, efforts to bully or micromanage are inappropriate,” Youngkin wrote to Spanberger. “It’s regretful that I must communicate to you in this manner, but your correspondence left no other choice.”

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Thomas Robertson

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  • Spanberger asks U.Va. board to pause search for new president amid Trump scrutiny – WTOP News

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    Abigail Spanberger is asking the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia to pause its search for a new president until she’s sworn in and can appoint new board members.

    Virginia’s governor-elect is asking the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia to pause its search for a new president until she’s sworn in and can appoint — and the General Assembly can confirm — new board members.

    Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat and alumna of the school, said in a letter Wednesday to the university’s rector and vice rector who head the board, that she’s “deeply concerned by recent developments” at the university and how they might affect the legitimacy of the search for a new president.

    The school’s last president, James Ryan, resigned during the summer over pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration and conservative critics over the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

    Spanberger said federal overreach that led to Ryan’s departure went unchallenged by the University of Virginia board.

    In the aftermath, the school declined a request from the Trump administration to make commitments aligned with the president’s priorities in exchange for favorable access to funding. But days later, the university struck a deal with the White House to abide by guidance forbidding discrimination in admissions and hiring in order to end the Justice Department’s investigations into the school.

    In her letter, Spanberger called the university’s actions into question.

    “Over the past six months, the actions of the Board of Visitors have severely undermined the public’s and the University community’s confidence in the Board’s ability to govern productively, transparently, and in the best interests of the University,” she wrote.

    Making things worse in Spanberger’s mind, five members of the board have not been confirmed by the General Assembly, meaning the board’s composition is in violation of statutory requirements.

    Spanberger went on to request the board refrain from “rushing” the search and selection of finalists for the presidency until the board is full and in compliance, “meaning that I have appointed and the General Assembly has confirmed” new board members.

    It’s a signal of Spanberger’s willingness to challenge the Trump administration, which has been targeting universities across the country that don’t align with its priorities.

    She said she’ll be making her board appointments soon after her inauguration on Jan. 17. Her appointees are likely to be pushed through quickly by the General Assembly, as both chambers are controlled by Democrats.

    “It will be a priority of my administration to stabilize and normalize the leadership of our public colleges and universities,” Spanberger wrote.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Thomas Robertson

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  • Democrats are hopeful again. But unresolved questions remain about party’s path forward

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — For a day, at least, beleaguered Democrats are hopeful again. But just beneath the party’s relief at securing its first big electoral wins since last November’s drubbing lay unresolved questions about its direction heading into next year’s midterm elections.

    The Election Day romp of Republicans stretched from deep-blue New York and California to swing states Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. There were signs that key voting groups, including young people, Black voters and Hispanics who shifted toward President Donald Trump’s Republican Party just a year ago, may be shifting back. And Democratic leaders across the political spectrum coalesced behind a simple message focused on Trump’s failure to address rising costs and everyday kitchen table issues.

    The dominant performance sparked a new round of debate among the party’s establishment-minded pragmatists and fiery progressives over which approach led to Tuesday’s victories, and which path to take into the high-stakes 2026 midterm elections and beyond. The lessons Democrats learn from the victories will help determine the party’s leading message and messengers next year — when elections will decide the balance of power in Congress for the second half of Trump’s term — and potentially in the 2028 presidential race, which has already entered its earliest stages.

    People cheer as Democrat Abigail Spanberger walks out on stage after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor’s race during an election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

    “Of course, there’s a division within the Democratic Party. There’s no secret,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference about the election results.

    Sanders and his chief political strategist pointed to the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a model for Democrats across the country. But Rep. Suzan Del Bene, who leads the House Democrats’ midterm campaign strategy, avoided saying Mamdani’s name when asked about his success.

    Del Bene instead cheered the moderate approach adopted by Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in successful races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey as a more viable track for candidates outside of a Democratic stronghold like New York City.

    “New York is bright blue … and the path to the majority in the House is going to be through purple districts,” she told The Associated Press. “The people of Arizona, Iowa and Nebraska aren’t focused on the mayor of New York.”

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a likely Democratic presidential prospect who campaigned alongside Democrats in several states leading up to Tuesday’s elections, noted the candidates hit on a common issue that resonated with voters, regardless of location.

    “All of these candidates who won in these different states were focused on peoples’ everyday needs,” Shapiro said. “And you saw voters in every one of those states and cities showing up to send a clear message to Donald Trump that they’re rejecting his chaos.”

    Intraparty criticism

    Amid Democrats’ celebratory phone calls and news conferences, members of the party’s different wings had some sharp critiques for each other.

    While Shapiro cheered the party’s success during a Wednesday interview, he also acknowledged concerns about Mamdani in New York.

    Shapiro, one of the nation’s most prominent Jewish elected leaders, said he’s not comfortable with some of Mamdani’s comments on Israel. The New York mayor-elect, a Muslim, has described Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks as “genocide” against the Palestinian people and has been slow to condemn rhetoric linked to anti-Semitism.

    “I’ve expressed that to him personally. We’ve had good private communications,” Shapiro said of his concerns. “And I hope, as he did last night in his victory speech, that he’ll be a mayor that protects all New Yorkers and tries to bring people together.”

    Meanwhile, Sanders’ political strategist, Faiz Shakir, warned Democrats against embracing “cookie cutter campaigns that say nothing and do nothing” — a reference to centrist Democrats Spanberger and Sherrill.

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat who defeated democratic socialist Omar Fateh to win a third term, said at a news conference Wednesday that “we have to love our city more than our ideology.”

    “We need to be doing everything possible to push back on authoritarianism and what Donald Trump is doing,” Frey said. “And at the same time, the opposite of Donald Trump extremism is not the opposite extreme.”

    Signs welcomes voters on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Del Mar, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

    Signs welcomes voters on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Del Mar, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

    Democrats win everywhere

    Despite potential cracks in the Democratic coalition, it’s hard to understate the extent of the party’s electoral success.

    In Georgia, two Democrats cruised to wins over Republican incumbents in elections to the state Public Service Commission, delivering the largest statewide margins of victory by Democrats in more than 20 years.

    In Pennsylvania, Democrats swept not only three state Supreme Court races, but every county seat in presidential swing counties like Bucks and Erie Counties, including sheriffs. Bucks County elected its first Democratic district attorney as Democrats there also won key school board races and county judgeships.

    Maine voters defeated a Republican-backed measure that would have mandated showing an ID at the polls. Colorado approved raising taxes on people earning more than $300,000 annually to fund school meal programs and food assistance for low-income state residents. And California voters overwhelmingly backed a charge led by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw its congressional map to give Democrats as many as five more House seats in upcoming elections.

    Key groups coming back to Democrats

    Trump made inroads with Black and Hispanic voters in 2024. But this week, Democrats scored strong performances with non-white voters in New Jersey and Virginia that offered promise.

    About 7 in 10 voters in New Jersey were white, according to the AP Voter Poll. And Sherrill won about half that group. But she made up for her relative weakness with whites with a strong showing among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.

    The vast majority — about 9 in 10 — of Black voters supported Sherrill, as did about 8 in 10 Asian voters.

    Hispanic voters in New Jersey were more divided, but about two-thirds supported Sherrill; only about 3 in 10 voted for the Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli.

    The pattern was similar in Virginia, where Spanberger performed well among Black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian voters, even though she didn’t win a majority of white voters.

    This combination of photos taken on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, shows Abigail Spanberger in Richmond, Va., left, Zohran Mamdani in New York, center, and Mikie Sherrill in East Brunswick, N.J. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, Yuki Iwamura and Matt Rourke)

    This combination of photos taken on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, shows Abigail Spanberger in Richmond, Va., left, Zohran Mamdani in New York, center, and Mikie Sherrill in East Brunswick, N.J. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, Yuki Iwamura and Matt Rourke)

    Democrats will soon face a choice

    The debate over the party’s future is already starting to play out in key midterm elections where Democrats have just begun intra-party primary contests.

    The choice is stark in Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, where Democrats will pick from a field that features establishment favorite, Gov. Jan Mills, and Sanders-endorsed populist Graham Platner. A similar dynamic could play out in key contests across Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Michigan.

    Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is aligned with the progressive wing of the party, said the people he speaks to are demanding bold action to address their economic concerns.

    “Folks are so frustrated by how hard its become to afford a dignified life here in Michigan and across the country,” he said.

    “I’m sure the corporate donors don’t want us to push too hard,” El-Sayed continued. “My worry is the very same people who told us we were just fine in 2024 will miss the mandate.”

    ___

    Associated Press reporter Mike Catalini in Newark and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed.

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  • Va.’s governor-elect tells WTOP first executive orders will focus on affordability – WTOP News

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    In a one-on-one interview with WTOP’s Nick Iannelli, Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger is laying out what she plans to accomplish during her first days as governor.

    Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger has already made history in the Commonwealth, without even taking office, and in a one-on-one interview with WTOP’s Nick Iannelli, she’s laying out what she plans to accomplish during her first days in the governor’s mansion.

    In defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, Spanberger became the first woman in the state to be elected governor.

    Her victory led a blue wave in Virginia, in which Democrats won in races for lieutenant governor and attorney general, and flipped 13 seats in the House of Delegates, giving them a super majority.

    That should make it much easier for Spanberger to implement her policies, and WTOP is learning more about what’s at the top of her list.

    The audio below has been edited for broadcast on WTOP.

    WTOP’s Nick Iannelli speaks to Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger about her day one priorities.

    Read the full interview below.

    The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

    • Nick Iannelli:

      So let’s talk about day one priorities. When it was day one for Gov. Youngkin, he had a stack of executive orders to fast track his priorities and to reverse some of his predecessor’s policies.

      So on day one, is your day one going to look like that? Do you have a stack of executive orders and do you plan to do away with any of Youngkin’s policies?

    • Abigail Spanberger:

      Well, I am building out my day one stack. So, at this point in time, I am working on building out the day one priorities that I’ll be pursuing, certainly in concert with the General Assembly. I’ll need my partners in the legislative branch to be pursuing the legislation that I want to sign into law next year.

      And then I am also working on developing the executive orders that I will push out. What I can tell you is, I am working on building out a plan to best use the executive authority to ensure that we are delivering results for Virginia families, as it relates to contending with high costs and overall issues of affordability, particularly in housing and health care and in energy.

      There are some real unique challenges that so many Virginians are facing, certainly at this moment, because of the ongoing impacts of policies out of Washington, but also, of course, because of this ongoing shutdown. So we’re working on building out those executive orders that I will sign on the first day, but they will all be focused on issues of affordability.

    • Nick Iannelli:

      Do you plan on doing away with any of Youngkin’s policies, though? For example, Youngkin has been big on Virginia cooperating with federal immigration authorities. Do you plan on doing away with that, scrapping those priorities?

    • Abigail Spanberger:

      I have been clear on the fact that the executive order, I believe it’s 47, that he put out, mandating cooperation on immigration administrative action is something that I would change, and so that is something that I’ve been very clear on.

      Though, notably as a former law enforcement officer, cooperation between local, state and federal agencies is important when there is a warrant, and certainly when there is any sort of criminal offense. As a former law enforcement officer, I worked on many of those types of joint cases.

      So ultimately, that executive order that he put out is something that I’ve been quite clear that I would change.

    • Nick Iannelli:

      How about when it comes to Virginia’s relationship with the Trump administration? That is obviously going to change as Virginia is going to be completely controlled by Democrats now.

      Do you have any ideas in terms of taking legal action against the Trump administration? There was speculation that Virginia might do that if you won.

    • Abigail Spanberger:

      Well, I think certainly, as we have seen attacks on our federal employees, as we have seen the DOGE efforts come through, time and time and time again right now, with the efforts to take SNAP dollars away that were previously funded dollars allocated and legally should be distributed — the Trump administration’s choice to hold those dollars, that is something that’s been continually met with legal challenge. There have been states across the country that have challenged these actions and, unfortunately, Virginia has previously not joined in any of those efforts.

      So when it comes to anything that is defending the rights, the jobs, the livelihoods of Virginians that may be under attack by the Trump administration, then, generally speaking, that’s an area where I think people need to take an action. When we have seen states across the country taking action, joining together, pushing back on some of these efforts from the Trump administration, and unfortunately, Virginia has yet to join those efforts.

      So that is absolutely something that people should expect. But alternatively, in the new year, where there are areas where I can be an advocate for Virginia and work with this administration, I’ll endeavor to find those places, but certainly at a moment right now, the priority that I maintain is for the president to pull people into a room and to demonstrate the leadership necessary to end this government shutdown.

      And that is my top priority, my top request of the president, and frankly, my top request of all members of congressional leadership.

    • Nick Iannelli:

      So the day after the election, we heard from Gov. Youngkin, and he said that he remains concerned about Jay Jones, your attorney general-elect, saying that he believes Jones can’t do the job properly with all of the scrutiny surrounding the text message scandal.

      Do you have any concerns about Jones being able to do that job with all of that hanging over him, and to do his job without it becoming a big distraction?

    • Abigail Spanberger:

      So I think there’s two things here. Certainly Virginians have made their voices heard in electing Jay, and I trust the people of Virginia. I think ultimately, Virginians deserve and need leaders who are not afraid to stand up for Virginia, particularly when the Trump administration continues to attack our citizens, their livelihoods, our economy, threatens the health care of hundreds of thousands of Virginians.

      But I also think, and not to speak for him, but I do believe that Attorney General-elect Jones is aware that he has to demonstrate that he is going to do an excellent job that he certainly, along the campaign trail, made clear that he regretted the comments that he made. He apologized for them. And I think that now he has both the obligation and the mandate to demonstrate that his commitment is to the law. His commitment is to the people of Virginia, upholding and protecting our communities. And that’s what I expect him to do and endeavor to do every single day.

    • Nick Iannelli:

      As far as the redistricting efforts are concerned, that lawmakers just launched a week ago. As governor, when you take office, are you going to encourage those efforts, or will you be critical of them?

    • Abigail Spanberger:

      I think it’s important to note that the governor doesn’t necessarily play a role in this. So this is a General Assembly action that the General Assembly has taken. Ultimately, it would require a constitutional amendment in order to be able to do any type of redistricting, which is General Assembly votes, which they’ve already done once, they will vote again.

    • Nick Iannelli:

      But you would certainly have a lot of influence, though, as governor.

    • Abigail Spanberger:

      That’s when it would go to the people. Really what I am focused on in looking at and in conversations with the General Assembly, is the timeline, in terms of the pace at which this could or couldn’t get done, that pace at which it could or couldn’t get in front of the people for the people of Virginia to vote on.

      And I want to make sure that we have ample time to ensure that candidates who are running for those congressional seats have the ability to file their candidacies and run. And so, for me, looking toward what it is that the General Assembly is pursuing, the timing and the calendar of it matters now.

      As an issue of competitiveness, I would note that in my governor’s race, I won two of the congressional districts that are going to be highly contested in 2026. Certainly, there are many reasons why we here in Virginia might pursue redistricting, but notably, there are two seats, from a Democratic perspective, that are imminently winnable, because I just won them, and so I look forward to continuing the conversations.

      I think it was prudent for the General Assembly to keep its options open by passing what was a requirement, frankly, of being able to do it before the actual Election Day. I think it was prudent for the General Assembly to take that action, and now it becomes a question of timing, moving forward toward 2026 or 2028.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Thomas Robertson

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  • Virginia election winners break race and gender barriers amid national scrutiny on diversity

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    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As the polls closed on Tuesday across Virginia, it quickly became clear it was a night of firsts: Voters overwhelmingly elected a slate of candidates who broke race and gender barriers in contests considered among the most consequential nationally.

    Republicans in Virginia also fielded a historically diverse statewide ticket that would have set records.

    The results come as President Donald Trump has made his opposition to diversity initiatives a cornerstone of his platform, dismantling federal civil rights programs that sought to rectify a complicated history of racial discrimination. He has justified those moves by saying that race and gender equity programs overcorrect for past wrongs and foment anti-American sentiment — a position shared among many conservatives across the country.

    Still, Virginia’s election results — in tandem with high-profile Democratic victories across the U.S. — call into question whether Trump’s staunch positions on race, gender and gender identity are resonating with voters.

    Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel.


    Follow on

    Virginia’s first female governor

    Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday, giving Democrats a key victory heading into the 2026 midterm elections and making history as the first woman ever to lead the Commonwealth. Her victory was decisive, with about 57% of the vote.

    The race was bound to make history regardless of who came out on top: Spanberger was running against Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, marking the first time two women were the front-runners in a general election for governor.

    In her acceptance speech, Spanberger recalled how her husband said to their three daughters, “Your mom is going to be the governor of Virginia.”

    “And I can guarantee you those words have never been spoken in Virginia, ever before,” she said, beaming.

    Spanberger said her victory meant Virginians were choosing “pragmatism over partisanship” and “leadership that will focus on problem solving and not stoking division.”

    First Muslim woman elected statewide

    Democrat Ghazala Hashmi defeated Republican John Reid in the race for lieutenant governor, becoming the first Indian American woman to win statewide office in Virginia. She is also the first Muslim woman to be elected statewide in the U.S.

    Firsts are not new to Hashmi. She was the first Muslim woman elected to the Virginia Senate five years ago. Hashmi, a former English professor born in India, said at the time that her opposition to Trump’s Muslim ban motivated her to break into politics.

    This time around, her campaign for lieutenant governor focused less on her identity and more on key issues, such as health and education. Still, some said her identity was a prominent factor in the race. Reid recently took to social media to tie Hashmi to Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim elected mayor of New York City, despite marked differences in their platforms, nationalities and ages — a comparison critics said was Islamophobic.

    Like the governor’s race, the battle for lieutenant governor would have been historic either way: Reid was the first openly gay man nominated to statewide office in Virginia, and he faced hurdles on the trail in connection to his sexuality. GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked him to leave the ticket after opposition research linked him to a social media account with sexually explicit photos of men. At the time, Reid said he felt betrayed.

    In her victory speech, Hashmi said her candidacy reflected progress in the state and nation.

    “My own journey — from a young child landing at the airport in Savannah, Georgia, to now being elected as the first Muslim woman to achieve statewide office in Virginia and in the entire country — is only possible because of the depth and breadth of opportunities made available in this country and in this commonwealth.”

    Son of civil rights pioneers to be attorney general

    Democrat Jay Jones defeated Republican incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, becoming the first Black person elected as top prosecutor in the former capital of the Confederacy.

    Jones, a former Virginia delegate, comes from a long line of racial-justice trailblazers — a fact he emphasized throughout his campaign and after his victory.

    “My ancestors were slaves. My grandfather was a civil rights pioneer who braved Jim Crow,” Jones said Tuesday. “My mother, my uncles, my aunts endured segregation, all so that I could stand before you today.”

    That said, Jones’ victory is as much a referendum on dissatisfaction with the government shutdown and Trump’s mass firings, which have hit Virginia especially hard due to its high concentration of federal workers.

    Ever since Democrat Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, every time a new president has been elected, Virginia has voted in a governor the following year from the opposite party.

    Jones’ win comes after Miyares, elected in 2021, became the first Latino to hold a Virginia statewide office.

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  • Examining why Democrats swept 2025 elections

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    On Tuesday, Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won their gubernatorial races and exceeded pollsters’ expectations. Political strategists Alex Conant and Ofirah Yheskel, along with CBS News political director Fin Gómez, join with analysis.

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  • Northern Virginia accounts for 88% of Spanberger’s victory margin – WTOP News

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    Democrat Abigail Spanberger speaks on stage after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor’s race during an election…

    This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.

    Democrat Abigail Spanberger speaks on stage after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor’s race during an election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)(AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)

    Northern Virginia accounted for about 88% of Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger’s victory margin on Tuesday, according to preliminary election results analyzed by InsideNoVa.

    In the region’s four counties and five cities, Spanberger, the Democrat, won 72.3% of the total vote to just 27.4% for her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.

    Across the rest of Virginia, the margin was much tighter, with Spanberger winning 51.2% to 48.7% for Earle-Sears. Spanberger wound up winning with 57.1% of the total vote statewide as she ran up the largest margin in a gubernatorial election since 2009.

    InsideNoVa’s analysis is based on results from the Virginia Department of Elections as of midday Wednesday and does not include provisional ballots or late-arriving mail ballots, which will be counted and reported later this week.

    Spanberger’s margin across the region also far outpaced that of Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe in the 2021 election, which McAuliffe wound up losing to Republican Glenn Youngkin. In that race, McAuliffe won 63.7% of the Northern Virginia vote to 35.6% for Youngkin. He won the region by about 265,000 votes, but lost to Youngkin by 64,000 statewide.

    This year, Spanberger won the region by about 426,000 votes, only about 60,000 votes less than her statewide margin of 486,000.

    Total votes cast in the region were about 950,000, about 8,000 more than were cast in 2021. The 2025 number will increase as the provisional and late-arriving ballots are tallied.

    Statewide, 3.36 million votes were cast this year, an increase of about 72,000 from 2021.

    In last year’s presidential election, Democrat Kamala Harris won the region with 64.2% of the vote. About 1.25 million votes were cast regionwide. Harris trailed President Donald Trump across the rest of the state but still won the statewide vote by about 5 percentage points, a margin that Spanberger tripled on Tuesday.

    In Northern Virginia, Spanberger’s biggest margins were in the largest localities, and her margin increased by at least 24% in every locality, compared with McAuliffe’s margins in 2021. The biggest percentage increase was in Manassas, which Spanberger won by 3,502 votes, compared with a margin for McAuliffe of only 1,105 in 2021.

    Spanberger’s margin increases in the other Northern Virginia localities were as follows:

    • Alexandria, up 35.5%, or about 12,000 votes
    • Arlington, up 24.6%, or 13,000 votes
    • Fairfax County, up 53%, or 70,000 votes
    • Fairfax City, up 60%, or 1,600 votes
    • Falls Church, up 35.5%, or 1,400 votes
    • Loudoun County, up 163.8%, or 30,000 votes
    • Manassas Park, up 109.5%, or 850 votes
    • Prince William County, up 139.3%, or 32,000 votes

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  • Reality check: Democrats celebrate, Trump deflects blame, Mamdani under fire

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Everything changed on Tuesday.

    And nothing changed. 

    Bear with me.

    THE RESULTS ARE IN: 2025’S BIGGEST WINNER AND LOSERS FROM THE OFF-YEAR ELECTIONS

    Perhaps the most important thing that happened with the Democrats winning big in the off-year elections is the psychological boost. The Democrats haven’t had anything to celebrate for a year. Now, they’re high-fiving themselves. This is clearly a protest against President Donald Trump and Trumpism, which makes the victory a little sweeter.

    Two women had especially big nights. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is the new governor-elect. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is the commonwealth’s first female governor-elect. Hell, even Jay “two bullets” Jones, who sent those awful texts about wanting to kill the then-House speaker, won his race for Virginia Attorney General.  

    If you live in those states, your life may change a bit.

    Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger celebrates as she takes the stage during her election night rally at the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Tuesday, Nov. 4, in Richmond, Va. Spanberger defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to become the first female governor in the commonwealth’s history in an election that was seen as a national political bellwether leading into the midterms.  (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    But, it’s also a reminder that politics is not just about policy. Sure, the Democrats were shrewd to run on affordability, given that the president had promised to bring prices down. But ultimately, voters want someone they feel comfortable with, someone who can deal with unforeseen crises.

    Yet on the national front, Trump still controls the White House. He still controls the House. He still controls the Senate. He’s largely backed by the Supreme Court, despite skepticism at yesterday’s oral argument about whether tariffs fall under his emergency powers.

    So what has really changed?

    The continuing government shutdown fueled a sense of frustration and impatience with the president, as he acknowledged in that terse response to the GOP losses — which extended to California, where Gavin Newsom pushed through a redistricting plan in response to Republican gerrymandering.

    KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 2025 ELECTIONS

    Trump was quick to note that he wasn’t on the ballot. But, in a very real sense, he was on every ballot.

    The media invariably overinterpret these off-year elections in two left-leaning states. Trump sensed disaster so he just opted out, not wanting to be tainted by the coming losses.

    But he’s still got all his power.

    Let’s imagine it’s six months from now and the shutdown, now the longest in American history, is a distant memory. Let’s say the economy has improved somewhat — a big if, to be sure. Who knows whether that means the Democrats will romp in the midterms?

    Joe Biden suffered no midterm losses when predictions of a blue wave never materialized. Barack Obama lost the House in his first midterm, and then lost the Senate in his second midterm. George W. Bush lost the House in his second midterm, making Nancy Pelosi speaker. Trump lost the House in his first midterm, in 2018.

    Bush called it a “thumpin’,” Obama a “shellacking.”

    It’s just too early to say whether Trump will suffer a similar fate in next year’s midterm elections, when Democrats would only need to pick up a handful of seats to take control.

    Zohran Mamdani delivers victory speech on Election night with his banner behind him.

    Zohran Mamdani delivers a victory speech at a mayoral election night watch party, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York City.  (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

    The other unfolding drama is in the media capital, where Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City’s first Muslim mayor, beating Andrew Cuomo for the second time. Cuomo refused to make the traditional concession call, a petty move that was beneath him.

    Talk about the power of personality. The obscure assemblyman, who’s never run anything, is a self-described socialist who started at 1 percent in the polls. He is beloved by younger people and put together a coalition that somehow combined wide-eyed liberals with working-class immigrants in Brooklyn and Queens.

    Mamdani did blunder by making a fiery speech, almost yelling at times, rather than a more inclusive one.

    WHAT THE RESULTS OF THE 2025 ELECTIONS MAY MEAN FOR DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS

    He fared poorly among Jewish liberals, who are upset by his refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and threatend to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to the U.N.

    The mayor-elect will inevitably fail to fulfill many of his promises–free buses, free child care, free everything — because he won’t have the power and needs help from Albany. And some of his past comments from his defund-the-police, abolish-ICE days would have sunk a less charismatic candidate.

    Mamdani now has 81 percent name recognition, in keeping with the high profile of New York City mayors, from John Lindsay and Ed Koch to Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio.

    AOC is thrilled, but it’s the Republicans who couldn’t be happier.

    The National Republican Congressional Committee just launched a digital ad against Mamdani, which is running in nearly 50 swing districts.

    Andrew Cuomo

    Independent mayoral candidate and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks to the press after voting at a polling location at the High School of Art and Design in the Manhattan borough of New York City on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.  (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

    “A radical left earthquake just hit America. The epicenter: New York,” the spot says.

    They had already been campaigning against Mamdani in trying to make him the face of an increasingly left-wing party. Some starry-eyed supporters see socialism as the answer, but it hardly plays as well in Butte or Baton Rouge as in the Bronx. 

    Circling back to Trump, who slams Mamdani as a communist: Does he moderate a bit? Not his style. 

    He is always about firing up his base and the party he has remade in his image, even if Hill Republicans are resisting his demand to abolish the filibuster.

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    The media are heavily anti-Trump, and in a visceral way, especially since their corporate owners keep settling his lawsuits. That’s why you’re seeing so many on-air smiles as they replayed the victory speeches all day long.

    But these early proclamations of Trump’s inevitable demise may well turn out to be exaggerated.

    Howard Kurtz is a media and political analyst and the former host of FOX News Channel’s MediaBuzz. Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baier and The Story with Martha MacCallum among other programs.

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  • After stinging GOP losses, Youngkin pivots to legacy and transition – WTOP News

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    Less than 12 hours after Democrats swept Virginia’s statewide offices and expanded their majority in the House of Delegates, Gov. Glenn Youngkin addressed reporters.

    This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury. 

    Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks at a post-election news conference in Richmond, Va., on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)(AP/Allen G. Breed)

    Less than 12 hours after Democrats swept Virginia’s three statewide offices and expanded their majority in the House of Delegates to at least 64 of 100 seats, Gov. Glenn Youngkin addressed reporters and administration officials in a packed meeting room at the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond’s Capitol Square Wednesday morning.

    He used the appearance to reflect on his four-year term and begin publicly shaping how he wants his legacy to be viewed.

    Youngkin began by congratulating Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger and offering practical cooperation.

    “She will build her team, she will run her transition. And we will support her in that process, so that she and her team can hit the ground running,” he said.

    Legacy claims and record setting

    Youngkin emphasized what he described as his administration’s achievements.

    “We came in four years ago with an incredibly ambitious agenda. And we have worked diligently, tirelessly, and we’ve accomplished an extraordinary amount.”

    He hailed a Virginia with “record job growth, record investment, and record opportunity,” a safer state, and major business commitments.

    “There’s $143 billion of commitments from companies to expand in the commonwealth. That’s as much as the last five administrations combined. That underpins another 85,000 jobs and 40,000 construction jobs. 
At the end of the day, that’s what we have to focus on,” Youngkin said.

    The governor also reiterated his signature belief that economic growth is Virginia’s mechanism for opportunity.

    “And if I have one great piece of advice for anyone who is serving as governor, whether it’s Gov.-elect Spanberger, or 10 governors from now, it’s we must continue to drive economic prosperity through job creation. ”

    Reading the election results

    Spanberger’s win and the capture of lieutenant governor and attorney general offices by state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, and former delegate Jay Jones, alongside the House gains, triggered numerous interpretations of the public’s message.

    Youngkin declined to assign his party’s losses to his own performance, instead citing external factors. At Wednesday’s briefing, a reporter asked the governor whether the outcome in Virginia was a repudiation of President Donald Trump’s policies, especially around federal workforce issues.

    “There are going to be pundit after pundit after pundit who will un-pick the results,” Youngkin pushed back. “I, as a governor, will today do exactly what I knew I would be doing today, and that is preparing to finish strong.”

    He pointed directly to the federal government shutdown and its accompanying economic concerns.

    “It is a big, big challenge, I have been vocal about it,” he said. “I think that we have 330,000 federal workers in the commonwealth of Virginia, and to have this shutdown extending as the longest shutdown ever, has been extraordinary for so many Virginians. People are going without paychecks, they’re worried about mortgages and rents. They’re worried about how they’re going to feed their families.”

    On whether Republicans lost because his administration was viewed differently than he believes, Youngkin insisted he believes that “Virginians thoroughly support what we’ve been doing.”

    He cited the surpluses and tax relief: “We’ve run $10 billion of surpluses, and we’ve had $9 billion of tax relief.”

    Scandal and future prospects

    Youngkin didn’t shy from commenting on the controversy surrounding Jones, the incoming attorney general, whose 2022 text exchange with a Republican lawmaker in which he fantasized about shooting then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert and the death of his children became a campaign issue.

    “They were abhorrent, and I think that they once again reiterate that you can’t come into this job if you are espousing death on a political enemy, the death of children, and the death of law enforcement. And I believe… that disqualifies him for the job,” Youngkin said.

    He added that the next administration “will have to figure out how to deal with that, because they have law enforcement that they’re going to need to make sure feel good about doing the job… and that parents, with children, feel safe.”

    When asked how the election results might influence his own political trajectory, Youngkin remained focused on the job at hand and did not offer any clarity on plans beyond his term.

    “My focus has been, will be, and will continue to be on the commonwealth of Virginia up until the last second.”

    The Democratic rally cry

    Also on Wednesday, the Democratic House majority held a news conference at the nearby General Assembly Building.

    Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, declared the pickup of 13 seats “is what a mandate looks like.”

    “We even ran ahead of the top of the ticket and a number of seats, demonstrating the strength of our campaigns. This is the largest democratic majority we’ve won in more than three decades,” Scott said.

    He blamed the GOP’s’ widespread defeat on the party’s failure to push back against the president’s policies.

    “Until Republicans decide to stand up to Donald Trump and to MAGA extremism, this will continue to happen,” Scott said.

    David Richards, a political-science professor at University of Lynchburg, described the results as “pretty eye-opening,” which set the stage for the 2026 midterm elections.

    “I give a lot of credit to Spanberger for staying on point with the pocket-book issues that voters seemed concerned about,” Richards said, adding that the GOP’s emphasis on culture-war themes “did not work as well, so they will have to find another angle.”

    He noted Youngkin could face headwinds in his future political ambitions: “Youngkin may have some trouble ahead, if he is blamed for the Virginia loss.”

    House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, stands with Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, chair of the House Privileges and Elections Committee, during a Democratic news conference at the Capitol on Wednesday, celebrating the party’s sweep of statewide races and its newly expanded majority in the House of Delegates. (Photo by Shannon Heckt/Virginia Mercury)

    National ripple effects

    The Democratic thrust in Virginia is part of a broader wave.

    Trump remained largely silent on social media following defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and New York, but addressed Republican senators Wednesday morning at a breakfast in Washington, D.C.

    “Last night, it was, you know, not expected to be a victory… it was very Democrat areas. But I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” he said.

    “I’m not sure it was good for anybody… I thought we’d have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it. And also about the shutdown and how that relates to last night. I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans, and that was a big factor.”

    And on X, formerly Twitter, longtime Virginia GOP strategist and Trump’s 2024 campaign manager Chris LaCivita blamed the Republican defeat on Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican gubernatorial nominee who lost to Spanberger by nearly 15 points.

    “A Bad candidate and Bad campaign have consequences — the Virginia Governors race is example number 1,” LaCivita wrote late Tuesday.

    Advocacy voices join the chorus

    Major national and state advocacy groups weighed in as well.

    The Democratic National Committee’s Ken Martin said in a statement that “across Virginia, commonwealth voters made it clear what they were looking for from their next governor: lower costs, good jobs, affordable health care, and strong schools. … Those same voters made it clear who they want to lead: Abigail Spanberger.”

    The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s Heather Williams called the outcome “an earthquake election in Virginia … Democrats ran winning campaigns across every corner of the state, clinching nearly every target race and netting the biggest House majority in nearly 40 years.”

    From the civil-rights side, the ACLU of Virginia’s Mary Bauer emphasized that the election was “a critical step to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in Virginia … Voters delivered decisive wins to pro-civil-rights candidates up and down the ballot.”

    Meanwhile, the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund’s April Greene emphasized that abortion care – one of the key issues in the 2025 election cycle — is “a divine, human right. This victory is proof that our communities believe it too.”

    And from gun-safety advocates, the Giffords PAC described the sweep as “a major victory for public safety in Virginia. With last night’s wins and the election of a gun-safety champion in Governor-elect Spanberger, we know a safer future is coming to the commonwealth.”

    As Youngkin winds down his term, his tone Wednesday was firm, forward-looking and intent on defining his legacy — even in the face of a partisan shift in Richmond.

    The outgoing governor framed his remaining months as an opportunity to “finish strong” and hand off a stronger commonwealth.

    “We have worked together in order to meet extraordinary moments,” he said.

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    Thomas Robertson

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  • Warning signs for the GOP, lessons for Democrats: How Tuesday’s results will shape the 2026 midterms

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    (CNN) — Democrats’ dominance in Tuesday’s elections reset expectations ahead of next year’s midterm battle for House and Senate control, reinvigorating a party that has been in the political wilderness and leaving Republicans lamenting that the gains President Donald Trump made a year ago with key portions of the electorate all but evaporated.

    “Last night, if that wasn’t a message to all Republicans, then we’ve got our head jammed in the ground,” said West Virginia GOP Sen. Jim Justice.

    The list of Democratic winners spanned the party’s ideological spectrum — from Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist elected mayor of New York City, to Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the moderates with strong national security credentials elected governors of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.

    Their wins could rally Democrats in competitive House, Senate and governor’s races next year around a message all three made central to their campaigns, in different forms: pledges to reduce the cost of living.

    But the playing field won’t be easy for Democrats. Strategists in both parties agree that control of the House will be in play, but the net effect of redistricting moves around the country — particularly if the Supreme Court decides to weaken the Voting Rights Act — could leave fewer competitive seats for Democrats. And the 2026 Senate map includes only a handful of GOP-held seats that appear to be in play and multiple seats Democrats will have to defend.

    Still, Tuesday’s results may embolden Democrats to continue their strategy in the ongoing government shutdown, while igniting new debates over what kinds of candidates can win, and where.

    Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster, said the elections should be viewed within the broader context of a year in which the party’s voters have packed town halls and rallies, won key races like the Wisconsin Supreme Court contest in the spring and a slew of special elections, and scored candidate recruitment victories for next year’s midterms.

    “Take the whole year into account and it tells a pretty similar story, which is that Democrats are motivated and Republicans are less motivated,” Omero said.

    Trump, she said, “lost popularity and he’s lost altitude on all of his top issues, like the economy and immigration.”

    “Where does that leave his supporters in a midterm or off-year election?” Omero said. “What are they coming out for, if he’s less popular and his policies are less popular and his agenda’s less popular?”

    Voters cast their ballots at a polling station in Arlington, Virginia, on November 4. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images via CNN Newsource

    In addition to the wins in governor’s races and mayoral elections, and a critical victory in a statewide vote to green-light a redistricting effort to add five more seats that favor Democrats in California, the party also scored a long list of lower-profile victories on Tuesday.

    They broke the GOP’s supermajority in the Mississippi state Senate. They flipped two seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission. They defeated a voter identification ballot initiative in Maine. Their incumbent Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices prevailed in retention votes.

    The results showed that many of the gains Trump had made in 2024 have evaporated. In New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli couldn’t match Trump’s support levels with Latino and Black voters. In Virginia, Spanberger notched the most impressive Democratic performance in recent years — besting the margins of the party’s last two presidential nominees and carrying a scandal-plagued nominee for attorney general, Jay Jones, to victory on her coattails.

    For the GOP, the fallout could come in a number of forms — including altering the party’s push for redistricting to add winnable congressional seats in deep-red states, and changing how Republicans in competitive midterm races approach Trump.

    “The picture is pretty clear,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “It is not a muddled message.”

    Ayres pointed to several lessons Republicans should take from Tuesday’s results. In Virginia and New Jersey, two states Trump lost in all three of his presidential runs, Republican gubernatorial candidates tied themselves to the president, a “losing strategy from the start,” he said.

    Republicans might also be inclined to rethink their strategy on redistricting, he said.

    “Given the Democratic margins yesterday, about the last thing you want to do if you want to hold on to the House is weaken Republican incumbent House members, and that’s exactly what will happen if you’re trying to carve out more Republican districts,” he said.

    Trump world deflects blame

    For his part, Trump and his top allies publicly downplayed the election results, with the president noting on social media that he wasn’t on the ballot. He partially blamed the ongoing federal government shutdown, telling Republican lawmakers in a closed-door session Wednesday morning that they are getting “killed” politically by the impasse, a source told CNN.

    Vice President JD Vance said that “it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states.” But he also warned that the GOP needs “to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past.”

    “I said it in 2022, and I’ve said it repeatedly since: our coalition is ‘lower propensity’ and that means we have to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past,” Vance said Wednesday morning on X.

    Vance also urged Republicans to focus on affordability. He said the Trump administration “inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

    Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz called the election results a “great lesson for the Republican Party,” blaming the losing Virginia gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, for failing to excite Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

    “Your candidate needs to be able to turn out ALL FACTIONS of our party, and they do that by being MAGA all the way,” he wrote on X.

    Though Tuesday’s GOP losses were wide-ranging, Republicans focused on elevating one Democratic winner: Mamdani, the 34-year-old Muslim and democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City.

    House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called Mamdani “the new leader of the Democrat Party.”

    House Speaker Mike Johnson said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is “apparently a socialist now,” since Jeffries endorsed Mamdani.

    Democratic ideological rifts remain

    Mamdani’s victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City emboldened the left wing of the Democratic Party. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a group created to oust “corporate Democrats” and elect progressives, said Mamdani’s win marks a “turning point” for their movement and shows the importance of competitive races.

    One long-simmering debate Tuesday’s results didn’t settle is the ideological battle within the Democratic Party over the way forward, with a host of competitive House and Senate primaries just months away and the 2028 presidential primary already looming large.

    “Democratic primaries can and should be the battleground for the control of our party’s direction,” Andrabi said.

    A supporter for independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo watches election night returns during a watch party for Cuomo in New York on Tuesday. Credit: Heather Khalifa / AP via CNN Newsource

    However, in New Jersey and Virginia, the winning Democratic candidates are moderates with strong national security credentials. Spanberger, the Virginia governor-elect, criticized Mamdani in an interview with CNN just days before the election, suggesting his proposals aimed at reducing the cost of living will ultimately disappoint his supporters.

    “We don’t need to settle,” said Omero, the Democratic pollster. “We’re able to have more moderate candidates in some places and more progressive candidates in some places. That feels like an important lesson.”

    One area where Democrats appeared broadly on the same page Wednesday is the ongoing government shutdown — fueled in part by Democrats’ demand that Republicans make concessions on health care funding in order to pass a measure that would fund the government.

    Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X that it is “not a coincidence these big wins came at the exact moment when Democrats are using our power to stand for something and be strong. A huge risk to not learn that lesson.”

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    Eric Bradner, Arit John and CNN

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  • A Next-Generation Victory for Democrats

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    None of the three Democrats who won convincingly on Tuesday was in politics when Donald Trump was first elected President. In 2016, Abigail Spanberger, the governor-elect of Virginia, had recently left the C.I.A. and was working for an educational consultancy. Mikie Sherrill, who just won the race to be New Jersey’s next governor, was a helicopter pilot turned federal prosecutor. Zohran Mamdani, the thirty-four-year-old state assemblyman who will soon be New York City’s mayor, was rapping as Young Cardamom and volunteering for left-wing City Council candidates. For much of the past decade, the Democratic Party has seemed stuck in a pre-Trump past; Tuesday seemed like the turning of a generational page. At his victory party on Tuesday night, Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and the most ideological of the trio, was the most explicit about the shift: “We are breathing in the air of a city that has been reborn.”

    The 2025 elections were always going to be about the Democrats, not just because this year’s major races were set in blue places but because the Party has been adrift since last year’s Presidential election. Lately, the most reliable rhythm in political news has been commentators explaining what the Democrats “should” and “must” do. (“The Democrats must add to their collective vocabulary two words . . . equality and oligarchy,” Fintan O’Toole wrote, in The New York Review of Books, urging a more populist turn. More ecumenically, Ezra Klein wrote, in the Times, “The Democratic Party does not need to choose to be one thing. It needs to choose to be more things.”) For some more centrist Democrats, what the Party needed was to avoid being tagged with Mamdani’s more expansive left-wing views. Asked on CNN whether Mamdani was the future of the Party, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pointedly said no. (“Good to know,” Mamdani said, when told about Jeffries’s comment.) Senator Chuck Schumer refused to say who he voted for. “People do want us to be aspirational and dream big,” Spanberger said of Mamdani, a few days before the election. “They also don’t want us to lie to them.”

    But despite all the prickly talk and the very careful factional positioning—left versus center—the Democrats who won Tuesday all shared the same theme: that the most important things cost too much. Asked to define his closing message, Mamdani said it was “the same message that we opened with, which is that this is the most expensive city in the United States of America, and it’s time to make it affordable.” NBC News, following Spanberger during the last days of her campaign, found her “laser-focussed” on an economic message, because, as she put it, “We see the hardships of this moment.” In Sherrill’s final ad, she said, “I’ll serve you as governor to drive your costs down.” Mamdani’s support of a rent freeze was seen as a socialist-style proposal, but Sherrill had herself campaigned on declaring a state of emergency on her first day in office, in order to freeze utility costs for New Jersey families, including suburban homeowners. These ideas came from opposite factions in the Party, but, when you listened to them, they sounded very much the same.

    Set aside the endless and sometimes annoyingly abstract debate over whether the Democrats should move to the left or to the center, and a pair of insights emerge from Tuesday’s results, both of which might give some hope to a Party that has lately been starved for it. First, the prospect that the 2024 election marked an electoral “realignment,” in which young and nonwhite voters without college degrees moved inexorably toward the Republicans, now seems increasingly unlikely. The margins in Virginia, where Spanberger won by about fifteen percentage points, and New Jersey, where Sherrill won by twelve, suggested that these weaknesses had been largely circumstantial, with some racially diverse areas that had been drifting away from the Democrats, such as Hudson County, in New Jersey, swinging back toward them on Thursday. In the Washington Post/ABC News poll taken shortly before the election, sixty-six per cent of young voters disapproved of the job that President Trump is doing, as did more than seventy per cent of racial minorities. (“That’s not screaming realignment,” the analyst Ronald Brownstein noted.) Exit polls published by NBC had Spanberger and Sherrill winning men under twenty-nine—the demographic most thought to be fleeing to the right—by ten points. Mamdani won them by forty. This time, it was the New York socialist who brought new voters into the political process.

    Maybe more significant, as Mamdani, Sherrill, and Spanberger all seemed to recognize, Trump has handed them not just an issue but a theme that the Party might carry through to the midterms. Having won the Presidency in part because of concerns about the escalating cost of living, Trump has governed in ways that have deepened the problem. His so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act amounted to a vast transfer of money from the poor to the rich. He has been personally fixated on an escalation of tariffs that has made ordinary goods much more expensive. During the ongoing government shutdown, he has at one point refused a court order requiring his Administration to disburse funds to pay food-stamp recipients, as lines at food pantries grow. Millions of people now stand to lose health insurance because of the President’s hard-line position in budget negotiations. The most natural campaign for Democrats to run—one that the Party was built to run in the twentieth century—is ordinary people against the rich. Trump is handing it back to them. Cue the ads: the billionaire pardoned after investing in the Trump family’s crypto projects; the twenty billion dollars sent away to bolster the Argentinean President, a political ally of the White House, at the expense of American farmers; the bulldozers razing the East Wing in a project underwritten by Trump’s donors.

    How much more optimistic should Democrats allow themselves to be? Trump is still the President, and the pressures of his policies and his authoritarian tendencies are still mounting. Tuesday’s elections took place mostly in safely Democratic cities and states, among an off-year electorate that has recently tended to be bluer than in Presidential years, and the Party is still full of contradictory instincts and mutual antipathy. Even so, the winning campaigns suggested the themes that might help renew the Party, and their margins of victory offered hope for a strong midterm. Tuesday night on CNN had begun with Dick Cheney’s death and ended with a live stream hosted by Ben Shapiro and Charlamagne tha God. The old system was under pressure everywhere. “I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older,” Mamdani told his Election Night party. For the first time in a while, he might have said the same of his party, too. ♦

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    Benjamin Wallace-Wells

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  • Election 2025 | Special Report

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    Watch CBS News



    Democrats are projected to win key races in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia while California is projected to pass its Prop 50 congressional redistricting effort. Major Garrett anchors CBS News’ special coverage of election night 2025.

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  • Spanberger win leads Democratic sweep of statewide races in Virginia – WTOP News

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    Election Day has brought two major victories for Democrats in Virginia’s statewide races.

    Stay with WTOP on air, online and on our news app for team coverage, live results and analyses of election night in Virginia. Listen live.

    Abigail Spanberger has won a historic election to become Virginia’s first female governor and led a Democratic sweep of statewide races in an pivotal election ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

    Down ballot, Democrat Jay Jones won the attorney general race and Democratic state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi won the lieutenant governor race.

    The candidates’ wins dashed Republican hopes of maintaining power in all three top offices, currently led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin alongside Attorney General Jason Miyares and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who both lost their campaigns.

    More Election News

    Spanberger, a former congresswoman, won 57.5% of the vote and Earle-Sears fell behind with 42.3%, according to The Associated Press with 97% of votes counted as of 12:50 a.m.

    In the lieutenant governor race, Hashmi walked away with 55.6% of the vote, while Republican radio host John Reid fell behind with 44.1%, The Associated Press reported at 12:55 a.m. with 97% of votes counted. Hashmi will succeed Earle-Sears as the new lieutenant governor.

    Jones’ victory squashed Miyares’ bid for a second term as Virginia’s top prosecutor.

    The Democratic challenger prevailed over the incumbent despite controversy surrounding resurfaced text messages referencing political violence. Jones pulled ahead winning 53.1% of the vote while Miyares earned 46.5%, The Associated Press reported at 12:55 a.m. with 97% of votes counted.

    The results also mark a major victory for Democrats in an election that both parties have viewed as a bellwether for the midterm elections in 2026.

    Virginia’s election is also treated by analysts as a measure of voter attitudes amid a lengthy government shutdown during President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

    Outside the statewide races, all 100 seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates were up for grabs Tuesday. Democrats are projected to maintain their majority in the lower chamber.

    A moderate approach wins a high-stakes governor’s race

    The governor’s race was called in favor of Spanberger about one hour after polls closed.

    Spanberger delivered a victory speech in Richmond on Tuesday night, touching on topics such as education, abortion rights and the federal workforce.

    “We sent a message to every corner of the commonwealth, a message to our neighbors and our fellow Americans across the country,” Spanberger told a crowd of supporters. “We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our commonwealth over chaos.”

    Supporters at the celebration in the state’s capital shared their excitement with WTOP’s Scott Gelman.

    “This is history, the first woman governor in Virginia, and the right person to do the job,” said Monica Lucus, of Richmond. “I think it’s time for a change, and this is a burst of energy that the country needs, not just Virginia but the country.”

    After losing the governor’s race, Earle-Sears said she left a voicemail for Spanberger to wish her success.

    “I asked her to support policies that will unite us, that will not divide us, that will strengthen our families and keep us safe, and that if I can ever be of help doing that, I’m here,” Earle-Sears said at her campaign headquarters in Stafford County.

    Surveys showed Spanberger carried a commanding lead over Earle-Sears in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

    Spanberger had also far outraised her Republican opponent, bringing in more than $65 million compared to Earle-Sears’ $35 million, according to recent campaign finance reports shared by the Virginia Public Access Project.

    Though the election guaranteed to name the state’s first woman as governor, neither candidate made the race’s historic nature a focal point of their campaigns, instead focusing on topics such as the economy.

    Spanberger, a former CIA case officer and member of Congress, had said the election is about the struggles of everyday voters, including those impacted by cuts to the federal workforce or tariffs. She took a more moderate approach and avoided talking about Trump.

    Earle-Sears drew attention to transgender students in public schools and reducing the cost of living. Before taking office as lieutenant governor, Earle-Sears served in the U.S. Marine Corps and in the Virginia House of Delegates during the early 2000s.

    Attorney general race stirs up old texts

    Jones thanked Miyares for his service as attorney general and praised his supporters.

    “To the folks who stood by us every single step of the way, labor. We love you,” Jones said during a speech in Richmond. “The weight of that trust is not lost on me at all, nor is the history that led us to this moment right here. My ancestors were slaves. My grandfather was a civil rights pioneer who braved Jim Crow. My father, my mother, my uncles, my aunts endured segregation all so that I could stand here before you today.”

    In the final weeks before Election Day, the attorney general race spotlighted old text messages sent by Jones that showed he fantasized about political violence toward a former colleague.

    Jones has apologized for those texts, but they sparked pushback from the GOP nationwide, and Republicans called for the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.

    During the candidates’ debate, Jones attempted to refocus the race on Trump and said Miyares couldn’t push back on overreach from the White House.

    Miyares had argued that Jones is unqualified and pressed him on the text messages.

    But during a speech Tuesday night, he wished Jones the best and reflected on his time as attorney general.

    “The attorney general’s office we inherited was weak and a soft office focused more on politics, but we made it focused on where the victims should always come first, where crime fighting was our number one priority, and public safety was the objective,” Miyares said of his time in office.

    Lieutenant governor’s race makes history

    Hashmi will take over the lieutenant governor position from Earle-Sears, who opted against running for reelection and instead campaigned for governor.

    Hashmi is the first Indian American to win statewide office in Virginia. She will also be the country’s first Muslim woman in statewide office.

    “I know that many of us feel as though the nation is in the midst of challenges that are much deeper and more intense than those we have faced before, and that it will take us generations to repair,” Hashmi told a crowd in Richmond. “But let us not forget that the challenges we endure today are not entirely new, and they can be navigated.”

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    Voters cast ballots in high-stakes election in Virginia

    Before being elected to the Virginia General Assembly, Hashmi was an academic administrator. She has pushed for issues such as reproductive health care, gun violence protection and the economy.

    Polls had leaned in favor of Hashmi, with a slight lead of around two points over Reid in recent weeks. Both candidates are based out of the Richmond area.

    Reid has also spotlighted the economy in his campaign, along with law enforcement, parental rights and immigration enforcement.

    Early in his career, Reid worked as an intern for President Ronald Reagan. He has served as chief communications officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a veterans organization, according to his website.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

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    Jessica Kronzer

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  • Democrat Mikie Sherrill elected governor of New Jersey, defeating opponent who aligned with Trump

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    U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill on Tuesday was elected governor of New Jersey, raising hopes for Democrats and highlighting Republican vulnerabilities after there had been signs of a rightward shift in recent years in what has been a reliably blue state.Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and four-term member of Congress, defeated Jack Ciattarelli, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, and quickly cast her victory late Tuesday as a referendum on the Republican president and some of his policies — from health care to immigration and the economy.”We here in New Jersey are bound to fight for a different future for our children,” Sherrill told her supporters gathered to celebrate her victory. “We see how clearly important liberty is. We know that no one in our great state is safe when our neighbors are targeted, ignoring the law and the Constitution.” She was joined on stage with her husband and children.Sherrill, 53, offers some reassurance for moderates within the Democratic Party as they navigate the path forward for next year’s midterms. A former prosecutor and military veteran, Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, the other Democrat who was elected as Virginia governor, embody a brand of centrist Democrats who aim to appeal to some conservatives while still aligning with some progressive causes. Sherrill campaigned on standing up to Trump and casting blame for voters’ concerns over the economy on his tariffs.Ciattarelli called Sherrill to congratulate her on the results and did not mention Trump in his address.”It is my hope that Mikie Sherrill has heard us in terms of what we need to do to make New Jersey that place where everybody can once again feel that they can achieve their American dream,” Ciattarelli said.The start of voting on Tuesday was disrupted after officials in seven counties received e-mailed bomb threats later determined by law enforcement to be unfounded, said the state’s top election official, Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way. A judge granted a one-hour extension at some polling places after Democrats made a request for three schools that received the threats earlier Tuesday.Sherrill marks milestonesShe will be New Jersey’s second female governor, after Republican Christine Todd Whitman, who served between 1994 and 2001. Her victory also gives Democrats three straight gubernatorial election wins in New Jersey, the first time in six decades that either major party has achieved a three-peat.Ciattarelli lost his second straight general election after coming within a few points of defeating incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago.New Jersey’s odd-year race for governor, one of just two this year along with Virginia, often hinged on local issues such as property taxes. But the campaign also served as a potential gauge of national sentiment, especially how voters are reacting to the president’s second term and Democrats’ messaging ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, praised Sherrill’s win as “a roadmap for how Democrats can overcome precedent and win in deeply competitive races when we stay laser-focused on our positive vision to address the biggest issues impacting families in their daily lives.”Video below: Mikie Sherrill enters a voting site in Montclair, NJA victory against TrumpIn her speech on Tuesday, Sherrill said voters were concerned with attacks on their civil liberties as well as on their economic well-being. She said Trump is “ripping away” health care and targeting food benefits. Democratic governors across the country have been pushing back on those issues, as well as planned National Guard deployments in their states.Sherrill also criticized him for something that impacts New Jersey specifically: Canceling a project to expand train access to New York City. In the closing weeks of the campaign, she lambasted the president’s threat to cancel the Hudson River project.”Governors have never mattered more,” Sherrill said. “And in this state, I am determined to build prosperity for all of us.”From the Navy to the governor’s officeSherrill steps into the governorship role after serving four terms in the U.S. House. She won that post in 2018 during Trump’s first term in office, flipping a longtime GOP-held district in an election that saw Democrats sweep all but one of the state’s 12 House seats.During her campaign, Sherrill leaned hard into her credentials as a congresswoman and onetime prosecutor as well as her military service. But she also had to defend her Navy service record after a news report that she was not allowed to participate in her 1994 graduation ceremony from the U.S. Naval Academy commencement in connection with an academic cheating scandal at the school.Sherrill said the punishment was a result of not turning in some classmates, not because she herself had cheated. But she declined to release additional records that the Ciattarelli campaign said would shed more light on the issue.For her part, she accused Ciattarelli of profiting off the opioid crisis. He is the former owner of a medical publishing company that made continuing education materials for doctors, including some that discussed pain management and opioids. Sherrill called it “propaganda” for drug companies, something Ciattarelli denied.Promises for New JerseySherrill will inherit a state budget that swelled under Murphy, who delivered on promises to fund the public worker pension fund and a K-12 school aid formula after years of neglect under previous governors, by high income taxes on the wealthy. But there are also headwinds that include unfunded promises to continue a property tax relief program begun in the governor’s second term.Also on the ballot Tuesday were all 80 seats in the Assembly, which Democrats control with a 52-seat majority.New Jersey hasn’t supported a Republican for U.S. Senate or the White House in decades. The governor’s office, though, has often switched back and forth between the parties. The last time the same party prevailed in a third straight New Jersey election for governor was in 1961, when Richard Hughes won the race to succeed Gov. Robert Meyner. Both were Democrats.

    U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill on Tuesday was elected governor of New Jersey, raising hopes for Democrats and highlighting Republican vulnerabilities after there had been signs of a rightward shift in recent years in what has been a reliably blue state.

    Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and four-term member of Congress, defeated Jack Ciattarelli, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, and quickly cast her victory late Tuesday as a referendum on the Republican president and some of his policies — from health care to immigration and the economy.

    “We here in New Jersey are bound to fight for a different future for our children,” Sherrill told her supporters gathered to celebrate her victory. “We see how clearly important liberty is. We know that no one in our great state is safe when our neighbors are targeted, ignoring the law and the Constitution.” She was joined on stage with her husband and children.

    Sherrill, 53, offers some reassurance for moderates within the Democratic Party as they navigate the path forward for next year’s midterms. A former prosecutor and military veteran, Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, the other Democrat who was elected as Virginia governor, embody a brand of centrist Democrats who aim to appeal to some conservatives while still aligning with some progressive causes. Sherrill campaigned on standing up to Trump and casting blame for voters’ concerns over the economy on his tariffs.

    Ciattarelli called Sherrill to congratulate her on the results and did not mention Trump in his address.

    “It is my hope that Mikie Sherrill has heard us in terms of what we need to do to make New Jersey that place where everybody can once again feel that they can achieve their American dream,” Ciattarelli said.

    The start of voting on Tuesday was disrupted after officials in seven counties received e-mailed bomb threats later determined by law enforcement to be unfounded, said the state’s top election official, Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way. A judge granted a one-hour extension at some polling places after Democrats made a request for three schools that received the threats earlier Tuesday.

    Sherrill marks milestones

    She will be New Jersey’s second female governor, after Republican Christine Todd Whitman, who served between 1994 and 2001. Her victory also gives Democrats three straight gubernatorial election wins in New Jersey, the first time in six decades that either major party has achieved a three-peat.

    Ciattarelli lost his second straight general election after coming within a few points of defeating incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago.

    New Jersey’s odd-year race for governor, one of just two this year along with Virginia, often hinged on local issues such as property taxes. But the campaign also served as a potential gauge of national sentiment, especially how voters are reacting to the president’s second term and Democrats’ messaging ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

    Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, praised Sherrill’s win as “a roadmap for how Democrats can overcome precedent and win in deeply competitive races when we stay laser-focused on our positive vision to address the biggest issues impacting families in their daily lives.”

    Video below: Mikie Sherrill enters a voting site in Montclair, NJ

    A victory against Trump

    In her speech on Tuesday, Sherrill said voters were concerned with attacks on their civil liberties as well as on their economic well-being. She said Trump is “ripping away” health care and targeting food benefits. Democratic governors across the country have been pushing back on those issues, as well as planned National Guard deployments in their states.

    Sherrill also criticized him for something that impacts New Jersey specifically: Canceling a project to expand train access to New York City. In the closing weeks of the campaign, she lambasted the president’s threat to cancel the Hudson River project.

    “Governors have never mattered more,” Sherrill said. “And in this state, I am determined to build prosperity for all of us.”

    From the Navy to the governor’s office

    Sherrill steps into the governorship role after serving four terms in the U.S. House. She won that post in 2018 during Trump’s first term in office, flipping a longtime GOP-held district in an election that saw Democrats sweep all but one of the state’s 12 House seats.

    During her campaign, Sherrill leaned hard into her credentials as a congresswoman and onetime prosecutor as well as her military service. But she also had to defend her Navy service record after a news report that she was not allowed to participate in her 1994 graduation ceremony from the U.S. Naval Academy commencement in connection with an academic cheating scandal at the school.

    Sherrill said the punishment was a result of not turning in some classmates, not because she herself had cheated. But she declined to release additional records that the Ciattarelli campaign said would shed more light on the issue.

    For her part, she accused Ciattarelli of profiting off the opioid crisis. He is the former owner of a medical publishing company that made continuing education materials for doctors, including some that discussed pain management and opioids. Sherrill called it “propaganda” for drug companies, something Ciattarelli denied.

    Promises for New Jersey

    Sherrill will inherit a state budget that swelled under Murphy, who delivered on promises to fund the public worker pension fund and a K-12 school aid formula after years of neglect under previous governors, by high income taxes on the wealthy. But there are also headwinds that include unfunded promises to continue a property tax relief program begun in the governor’s second term.

    Also on the ballot Tuesday were all 80 seats in the Assembly, which Democrats control with a 52-seat majority.

    New Jersey hasn’t supported a Republican for U.S. Senate or the White House in decades. The governor’s office, though, has often switched back and forth between the parties. The last time the same party prevailed in a third straight New Jersey election for governor was in 1961, when Richard Hughes won the race to succeed Gov. Robert Meyner. Both were Democrats.

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  • Winsome Earle-Sears concedes Virginia governor race, says she’s ‘not going anywhere’

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    LEESBURG, Va. – Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears told the crowd at her election watch party in Loudoun County that she is “not going anywhere” after a defeat to Abigail Spanberger, and adding that she hopes the governor-elect governs as the moderate she repeatedly pledged to be on the campaign trail.

    “I think I learn more in a loss than I ever do in a victory,” Earle-Sears said.

    “I don’t think we came up short — I think we tried very, very hard — so many had counted me out for so long, and it’s an amazing thing to watch. And we just kept plugging and plugging.”

    Earle-Sears said she called Spanberger, but that Spanberger did not pick up. She said she wished her well and that she remains open to volunteering to help the Spanberger administration achieve any goals that would make Virginia successful.

    EARLE-SEARS COMES OUT SWINGING IN HEATED DEBATE AS SPANBERGER DODGES JAY JONES QUESTIONS

    Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears greets supporters on Election Night in Leesburg, Va. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    “I asked her to please consider all Virginians – that she will represent all of us and not just some of us,” she said.

    “I hope that Abigail considers school choice, opportunities for our children to excel – it can’t just be one path. How dare you stand in the doorway of a parent who says I want something different for my child,” she said.

    Earle-Sears added that she ran a race based on “foundational ideas” like repealing car taxes, protecting children and their education, and expanding the economy.

    WINSOME EARLE-SEARS RELEASES ‘TWO BULLETS’ AD SCATHING OPPONENT FOR FAILING TO DEMAND JAY JONES’ OUSTER

    “I don’t consider this a loss because … I’m a Christian first and Republican second and that’s the way it always should be — no political party has ever given their life for me,” she said.

    “I’m not going anywhere — and neither are you,” she said, adding that Virginia is not a radical-left state and that she intends to keep it that way.

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    “We must pray for Abigail, we must pray for our government.”

    “I’m really not even supposed to be here to think about it. I mean, I am an immigrant from another country, and yet you all have given me the opportunity to do this,” she said.

    In comments to Fox News Digital, Earle-Sears spokeswoman Peyton Vogel said she is “incredibly proud” of the campaign the outgoing lieutenant governor ran, and that Virginia, nonetheless, made history in electing its first female governor.

    Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital. 

    He joined Fox News in 2013 as a writer and production assistant. 

    Charles covers media, politics and culture for Fox News Digital.

    Charles is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. Story tips can be sent to charles.creitz@fox.com.

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  • Democrat Abigail Spanberger wins Virginia governor’s race in major test for party, CBS News projects

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    Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger will defeat Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the Virginia gubernatorial race, CBS News projected Tuesday, marking one of Democrats’ first major victories since President Trump’s win last year.

    Spanberger will be Virginia’s first female governor.

    Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial race tends to serve as a referendum on the president who was elected a year prior — and historically, the president’s party has almost always lost.

    National politics were a throughline in this year’s race, especially the Trump administration’s sweeping federal layoffs and the still-unresolved month-long government shutdown, which has forced most federal workers to go without pay. Both issues are potent in Virginia, which has nearly 150,000 federal civilian jobs and is home to scores of military personnel.

    Spanberger, a former CIA officer and congresswoman, positioned herself as an adversary of the Trump administration and sought to link Earle-Sears to Mr. Trump. She frequently tried to capitalize on frustration over federal layoffs and Mr. Trump’s tariffs.

    Virginia has moved leftward in recent years, driven by shifts in the fast-growing suburbs of Washington, D.C., though Democrats lost ground last year, with Mr. Trump boosting his share of the statewide vote from 44% in 2020 to 46.1% in 2024.

    A year later, however, the president’s approval rating in Virginia stands at 42%, with 55% disapproving, according to exit poll data — a possible liability for Republicans.

    But the race also follows months of uncertainty for the Democratic Party, which was stung by its 2024 loss and is still riven by disagreements between its moderate and progressive factions on the party’s strategy moving forward. Meanwhile, just 34% of U.S. adults hold a favorable view of the party, compared to 41% for the GOP, according to a CBS News poll from last month.

    Earle-Sears, a Marine Corps veteran and former state lawmaker, took aim at Spanberger over immigration and the participation of transgender students in school sports.

    In recent weeks, the race has been dominated by a scandal in the usually lower-profile Virginia attorney general election, after text messages surfaced showing Democratic nominee Jay Jones used violent and incendiary language toward Republicans. Spanberger condemned the messages, but Earle-Sears pressed her to call for Jones to drop out of the race.

    Spanberger campaigned in the closing stretch with high-profile Democrats like former President Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

    Earle-Sears drew on support from Virginia’s popular but term-limited incumbent Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose economic record Earle-Sears has touted. 

    But the Republican candidate wasn’t explicitly endorsed by Mr. Trump, the leader of her party, even though the president gave his “complete and total endorsement” to the GOP nominees in Virginia’s attorney general race and New Jersey’s gubernatorial race. Mr. Trump has offered some support for Earle-Sears — but not by name.

    “I think the Republican candidate is very good, and I think she should win because the Democrat candidate’s a disaster,” he told reporters two weeks ago, adding, “I haven’t been too much involved in Virginia.”

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