Latest news with #Virginians'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Moderate Democrats hope Spanberger holds the answer to their political problems
NORFOLK, Virginia — Six months out from November, Virginia Democrats believe the governor's race is Abigail Spanberger's to lose. There's a risk the former member of Congress could get bogged down by national malaise toward the Democratic Party, and her margins could end up being tight because of the negative Democratic brand. But Democrats are hopeful that Spanberger can overcome that national dynamic. She flipped a competitive district in 2018 that stretches into rural Southwest Virginia and she benefits from the unpopular actions of President Donald Trump. His stop-and-start trade war coupled with the elimination of thousands of federal jobs and looming Medicaid cuts are widely unwelcome in the Commonwealth. Spanberger enjoys strong name recognition and is far out-fundraising her opponent, a candidate who even some fellow Republicans are wincing about. A sweeping Democratic victory this fall could spook Republicans in Congress over their inaction to Trump's aggressive agenda and provide a blueprint for staying laser focused on kitchen table issues like economic uncertainty and federal belt-tightening that the party can ride into the midterms next year. 'If we can get these people to vote we're going to smoke them,' Virginia House Speaker Don Scott said. 'We just got to get them to vote. That's the fear — apathy.' Spanberger, speaking with reporters ahead of a campaign event in the battleground region of Hampton Roads last week, shrugged off the fact that her campaign is under the national spotlight. She said the operation is 'totally grounded' in Virginia and the 'issues and priorities that matter here.' 'If that ends up setting a good example for other people running other places, then that's their choice,' she said before entering a packed event full of local elected officials, donors and supporters in Norfolk, to mark the launch of her affordability agenda calling for lowering health care and prescription drug costs. She's readying forthcoming plans to address other strains on Virginians' budgets. Selling strong messages on affordable housing, rural hospitals and public schools will help Democrats appeal to the more conservative parts of the state in Southwest and Central Virginia, said Aaron Rouse, a state senator and one of six Democrats running for lieutenant governor. Spanberger is 'doing everything right so far,' he said. Spanberger raised $6.7 million in the first quarter, dwarfing the $3.1 million brought in by opponent Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor who was limited by state law from fundraising during the state legislative session earlier this year. Early polling shows Spanberger is in a strong position: A Roanoke College survey this month showed her with a 17 percentage point lead, and more than half of respondents believe the country is on the wrong track. Another poll put the race at a much tighter margin, with Spanberger leading by four points. But Spanberger's campaign may run into the strong negative headwinds around the Democratic Party, which has been trying to reverse pessimistic attitudes toward its leaders. National Democrats believe that if Spanberger can broaden her appeal beyond the blue strongholds of Northern Virginia by convincingly talking about kitchen table issues, that will give them a much-needed morale boost and help guide them in the midterms. Spanberger is focusing her campaign for governor on how she plans to lower costs – and blaming Trump in Washington and term-limited Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Richmond for making life more expensive. Virginia's off-year elections are viewed as a referendum on the party controlling Washington, and Democrats are feeling confident as Trump's DOGE cuts come down hard on Virginia's robust federal workforce. A recent analysis from the University of Virginia found that the state is projected to lose more than 9,000 government jobs, propelling a downturn in employment that is worrying state leaders. '[Trump] creates the general political environment that you're in,' said Virginia-based Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett. 'She's done a pretty good job of surfing that wave, of bringing more people into the party when they're not happy with what the Trump administration is doing.' November turnout may answer how much Democrats can count on Trump's disassembling of the federal government as a motivating issue in the midterms. Virginia Democrats, confident that Elon Musk's unpopularity will linger even as his term as a special government employee has expired, point to Department of Defense workers and contractors living in the more competitive Hampton Roads area who lost their jobs as evidence that anger over DOGE is not just limited to the northern part of the state. Youngkin has defended the cuts as necessary to trim government waste, and encouraged out-of-work Virginians to pursue other open jobs in the state. His office has created a website to connect former federal workers to new positions. Earle-Sears was captured on leaked audio in April saying that 'we don't want people to lose their jobs' but downplayed the losses. "Abigail Spanberger is dusting off the same worn-out playbook that cost Democrats the governor's mansion in 2021," said Peyton Vogel, press secretary for the Earle-Sears campaign, in a statement, referring to when Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe. "Back then, Virginians rejected fear mongering messaging and chose a leader with real solutions to make life more affordable and move the Commonwealth forward. Spanberger's current strategy failed then, and replaying it now won't change the outcome." Moderate Democrats see Spanberger as the ideal candidate to confirm their view that the party should shift toward the middle. In 2018, she defeated Tea Partier Rep. Dave Brat in an upset, joining the wave of women elected to Congress on a wave of anti-Trump energy. But Trump is much more popular than he was in his first term, so appealing to his voters becomes a crucial part of the comeback strategy. In her first campaign ad launched this week, Spanberger highlighted her bipartisan voting record while serving in Congress. In 2022, after Democrats came close to losing the House, she was captured on leaked audio criticizing Democrats for embracing positions defunding the police and warned them to 'never use the word socialism again.' 'Her biggest vulnerability is being a Democrat in this moment, but she is sufficiently defining herself as a different kind of Democrat,' said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way. 'She watched carefully what happened to us in 2024 and is trying not to make the same mistakes, just trying to keep her focus on the things that voters actually care about and not get distracted by things that they don't.' Democrats view Hampton Roads, a competitive area that Spanberger needs to win, as the epicenter of several of Trump's policies. In addition to DOGE layoffs, the Port of Virginia located here is bracing for a decline in shipments from other major trading partners. It's also a popular vacation destination for America's neighbors to the north. Virginia Beach State Del. Michael Feggans, a Democrat running for reelection in one of the most competitive state legislative races, said he's heard from local business leaders concerned about the decline of Canadian tourists annoyed by Trump's annexation talk. Democrats are aiming to expand their one-seat majority in the state House, and are adopting a similar economic message as Spanberger to try to make that happen. 'He said on day one he was going to fix the price of everything and bring world peace, and there's been nothing but chaos, confusion, and people are scared and people are worried,' Feggens said. Virginia Republicans, on the other hand, are banking on DOGE being a distant memory when voters head to the polls in November. Those Republicans are skeptical that Spanberger's anti-Trump message will resonate beyond the Democratic base, and they insist that swayable voters. 'Her entire message seems to be: Trump sucks,' said a Republican operative granted anonymity to speak freely. 'When you get down to brass tacks, people want to see what exactly are you going to do.'
Politico
4 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Moderate Democrats hope Spanberger holds the answer to their political problems
NORFOLK, Virginia – Six months out from November, Virginia Democrats believe the governor's race is Abigail Spanberger's to lose. There's a risk the former member of Congress could get bogged down by national malaise toward the Democratic Party, and her margins could end up being tight because of the negative Democratic brand. But Democrats are hopeful that Spanberger can overcome that national dynamic. She flipped a competitive district in 2018 that stretches into rural Southwest Virginia and she benefits from the unpopular actions of President Donald Trump. His stop-and-start trade war coupled with the elimination of thousands of federal jobs and looming Medicaid cuts are widely unwelcome in the Commonwealth. Spanberger enjoys strong name recognition and is far out-fundraising her opponent, a candidate who even some fellow Republicans are wincing about. A sweeping Democratic victory this fall could spook Republicans in Congress over their inaction to Trump's aggressive agenda and provide a blueprint for staying laser focused on kitchen table issues like economic uncertainty and federal belt-tightening that the party can ride into the midterms next year. 'If we can get these people to vote we're going to smoke them,' Virginia House Speaker Don Scott said. 'We just got to get them to vote. That's the fear – apathy.' Spanberger, speaking with reporters ahead of a campaign event in the battleground region of Hampton Roads last week, shrugged off the fact that her campaign is under the national spotlight. She said the operation is 'totally grounded' in Virginia and the 'issues and priorities that matter here.' 'If that ends up setting a good example for other people running other places, then that's their choice,' she said before entering a packed event full of local elected officials, donors and supporters in Norfolk, to mark the launch of her affordability agenda calling for lowering health care and prescription drug costs. She's readying forthcoming plans to address other strains on Virginians' budgets. Selling strong messages on affordable housing, rural hospitals and public schools will help Democrats appeal to the more conservative parts of the state in Southwest and Central Virginia, said Aaron Rouse, a state senator and one of six Democrats running for lieutenant governor. Spanberger is 'doing everything right so far,' he said. Spanberger raised $6.7 million in the first quarter, dwarfing the $3.1 million brought in by opponent Winsome Earle-Sears, the lieutenant governor who was limited by state law from fundraising during the state legislative session earlier this year. Early polling shows Spanberger is in a strong position: A Roanoke College survey this month showed her with a 17 percentage point lead, and more than half of respondents believe the country is on the wrong track. Another poll put the race at a much tighter margin, with Spanberger leading by four points. But Spanberger's campaign may run into the strong negative headwinds around the Democratic Party, which has been trying to reverse pessimistic attitudes toward its leaders. National Democrats believe that if Spanberger can broaden her appeal beyond the blue strongholds of Northern Virginia by convincingly talking about kitchen table issues, that will give them a much-needed morale boost and help guide them in the midterms. Spanberger is focusing her campaign for governor on how she plans to lower costs – and blaming Trump in Washington and term-limited Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Richmond for making life more expensive. Virginia's off-year elections are viewed as a referendum on the party controlling Washington, and Democrats are feeling confident as Trump's DOGE cuts come down hard on Virginia's robust federal workforce. A recent analysis from the University of Virginia found that the state is projected to lose more than 9,000 government jobs, propelling a downturn in employment that is worrying state leaders. '[Trump] creates the general political environment that you're in,' said Virginia-based Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett. 'She's done a pretty good job of surfing that wave, of bringing more people into the party when they're not happy with what the Trump administration is doing.' November turnout may answer how much Democrats can count on Trump's disassembling of the federal government as a motivating issue in the midterms. Virginia Democrats, confident that Elon Musk's unpopularity will linger even as his term as a special government employee has expired, point to Department of Defense workers and contractors living in the more competitive Hampton Roads area who lost their jobs as evidence that anger over DOGE is not just limited to the northern part of the state. Youngkin has defended the cuts as necessary to trim government waste, and encouraged out-of-work Virginians to pursue other open jobs in the state. His office has created a website to connect former federal workers to new positions. Earle-Sears was captured on leaked audio in April saying that 'we don't want people to lose their jobs' but downplayed the losses. 'Abigail Spanberger is dusting off the same worn-out playbook that cost Democrats the governor's mansion in 2021,' said Peyton Vogel, press secretary for the Earle-Sears campaign, in a statement, referring to when Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe. 'Back then, Virginians rejected fear mongering messaging and chose a leader with real solutions to make life more affordable and move the Commonwealth forward. Spanberger's current strategy failed then, and replaying it now won't change the outcome.' Moderate Democrats see Spanberger as the ideal candidate to confirm their view that the party should shift toward the middle. In 2018, she defeated Tea Partier Rep. Dave Brat in an upset, joining the wave of women elected to Congress on a wave of anti-Trump energy. But Trump is much more popular than he was in his first term, so appealing to his voters becomes a crucial part of the comeback strategy. In her first campaign ad launched this week, Spanberger highlighted her bipartisan voting record while serving in Congress. In 2022, after Democrats came close to losing the House, she was captured on leaked audio criticizing Democrats for embracing positions defunding the police and warned them to 'never use the word socialism again.' 'Her biggest vulnerability is being a Democrat in this moment, but she is sufficiently defining herself as a different kind of Democrat,' said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way. 'She watched carefully what happened to us in 2024 and is trying not to make the same mistakes, just trying to keep her focus on the things that voters actually care about and not get distracted by things that they don't.' Democrats view Hampton Roads, a competitive area that Spanberger needs to win, as the epicenter of several of Trump's policies. In addition to DOGE layoffs, the Port of Virginia located here is bracing for a decline in shipments from other major trading partners. It's also a popular vacation destination for America's neighbors to the north. Virginia Beach State Del. Michael Feggans, a Democrat running for reelection in one of the most competitive state legislative races, said he's heard from local business leaders concerned about the decline of Canadian tourists annoyed by Trump's annexation talk. Democrats are aiming to expand their one-seat majority in the state House, and are adopting a similar economic message as Spanberger to try to make that happen. 'He said on day one he was going to fix the price of everything and bring world peace, and there's been nothing but chaos, confusion, and people are scared and people are worried,' Feggens said. Virginia Republicans, on the other hand, are banking on DOGE being a distant memory when voters head to the polls in November. Those Republicans are skeptical that Spanberger's anti-Trump message will resonate beyond the Democratic base, and they insist that swayable voters. 'Her entire message seems to be: Trump sucks,' said a Republican operative granted anonymity to speak freely. 'When you get down to brass tacks, people want to see what exactly are you going to do.'
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘I cannot imagine the House without Gerry': Lawmakers react after Virginia Rep. Connolly says he wont seek reelection, citing health
VIRGINIA () — Several Virginia lawmakers are speaking out after Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) announced Monday that , citing the return of his cancer. In November 2024, that he had recently been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. His announcement came just days after he was reelected to Virginia's 11th District. 'It was a surprise because, except for some intermittent abdominal aches and pains, I had no symptoms. I'm going to undergo chemotherapy and immunotherapy right away,' Connolly said in a statement at the time. Two suspects arrested in Kristi Noem's purse theft at DC restaurant, officials say Now, nearly six months later, Connolly said he won't be seeking reelection and will soon be stepping back in his role as the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. 'After grueling treatments, we've learned that the cancer, while initially beaten back, has now returned,' wrote Connolly, in part, in a statement on X. 'I'll do everything possible to continue to represent you and thank you for your grace.' 'The sun is setting on my time in public service, and this will be my last term in Congress. I will be stepping back as Ranking Member of the Oversight Committee soon,' he continued. 'With no rancor and a full heart, I move into this final chapter full of pride in what we've accomplished together over 30 years. My loving family and staff sustain me. My extended family- you all have been a joy to serve.' Connolly has held the seat for Virginia's 11th District, which includes Fairfax County and the City of Fairfax, since 2008, and is Before his election to Congress, he served on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for 14 years, including five years as chairman. 'Northern Virginia is a better place for Gerry Connolly's decision to enter public service. He has left an indelible mark on Fairfax County, our region, our Commonwealth, and our country as a tireless advocate for our federal workforce, the U.S. Postal Service, and our public transit system,' Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), said in a statement, following Connolly's announcement. 'He served his constituents faithfully, was a vigorous fighter for government reform, and remains one of the most effective legislators in either party. 'I cannot imagine the House without Gerry. We have been friends for many years, but for the past decade our partnership was an essential starting point from which so much important work followed,' he continued. 'I deeply respect Gerry's decision to put his constituents first by stepping back, but I will miss him terribly in Congress.' Former Democratic congresswoman and gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger also expressed support, saying Connolly has worked to grow the Democratic party in Northern Virginia and 'stood up for Virginians' throughout his career. 'From his distinguished tenure as both a Supervisor and Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to his leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, Virginians know that Congressman Connolly has dedicated his career to getting things done for them — for us,' said Spanberger. 'I'm personally grateful for the privilege of knowing Gerry, learning from him, and laughing with him.' 'He frequently jokes of the little devil on his shoulder that encourages his wry wit and brings about rooms full of laughter, but it's his giant heart that has led him in his public service,' she added. 'Let's bring the Commanders home': Bowser, Washington Commanders announce nearly $3 billion RFK Stadium deal Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) also praised Connolly, not only as a public servant but also as a friend. 'Whether it's standing up for federal workers, advocating for good governance, or now confronting cancer with the same resilience and grit that have defined his life of public service, Gerry is one of the toughest fighters I know,' Warner 'I have no doubt that Gerry will continue to fight- for his health, for his community, and for the causes he believes in.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
University of Lynchburg adds more Cannabis Studies courses
LYNCHBURG, Va. (WFXR)—The cannabis industry is growing, and the University of Lynchburg's Professional Development Institute is adding programming to accommodate it. The school first partnered with Green Flower to offer Cannabis Studies a year ago. Now the two are offering nine-week certificate courses online. Max Simon is CEO of Green Flower. 'They're designed to give people the knowledge and skills to enter the three most important job areas in the cannabis industry. Cultivation, manufacturing, and cannabis retail,' said Simon. Even as the industry grows though, federal reform hasn't been reached and some states like the commonwealth are still putting the breaks on their retail market. In March, Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed creating a retail marijuana market again, claiming the substance quote 'endangers Virginians' health and safety'. Simon believes it's only a delay. 'Cannabis legalization is an inevitability,' he said. 'It's not a question of if, it's really a question of when.' Roanoke College introduces new Cannabis Studies Program John Zinn is executive director of the Professional Development Institute at the University of Lynchburg. 'With the current state in the commonwealth with cannabis, you know there's a possibility down the road it might open up more and we plan to be ready to meet the market when that happens,' he said about adding more programs. The new programs are designed to be more accessible for people interested in careers in cannabis. They're shorter, cheaper, and online. 'You don't necessarily have to be in the commonwealth, you can be in markets that are embracing the cannabis industry a little bit more,' he said. Zinn says enrollment in their cannabis programming has been fairly consistent over the last year, bringing in a couple students every other month to join cohorts of students from all around the country training to join the new industry. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court Could Take Another Shot at Voting Rights
It is impossible to understand the United States without understanding the Civil War and Reconstruction. The American constitutional order went through more changes during those two decades than in the other 230 years of its existence combined. Now the Supreme Court may soon have another opportunity to revisit their contested aftermath. A group of Virginia election officials asked the justices last month to effectively nullify one of the Reconstruction-era laws that set the terms for the state's postwar readmission to the Union. In doing so, they hope to maintain a strict regime of disenfranchising Virginians with felony convictions that the Reconstruction-era Congress sought to prevent. Should the justices let the lower court's decision stand, it could breathe new life to a long-forgotten congressional effort to protect multiracial democracy in the South. The case springs from a decade-long conflict over the Virginia state constitution and its strict felon-disenfranchisement provision. Twenty-four states impose some sort of legal barrier on their residents' right to vote after being convicted of a felony. Many of those states restore a prisoner's voting rights after they complete their sentence, including probation and parole. Others make it permanent for certain crimes. Virginia is an outlier: Anyone convicted of a felony in the state is automatically and permanently disenfranchised upon conviction. (They are also excluded from jury service and certain other civic rights and duties.) Under the state constitution, which was most recently rewritten in 1971, Virginians with felony convictions can only regain their right to vote after their 'civil rights have been restored by the governor.' This discretionary power has led to uneven policy approaches over the last decade by Virginia's chief executives. Republican Bob McDonnell spent his tenure as governor from 2010 to 2014 working to modernize the state's patchwork criminal databases, hoping to make it easier to identify Virginians who would be eligible for having their rights restored. His successor, Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, initially issued an executive order in 2016 that sought to restore voting rights en masse, which was estimated to affect roughly 200,000 Virginians at the time. The Virginia Supreme Court overturned his order later that year and held that governors must restore voting rights on an individual basis. In response to the ruling, McAuliffe spent the rest of his term approving Virginians' restorations by signing individual orders almost every day. By the time he left office after the 2018 election, he had restored voting rights to exactly 173,166 Virginians. His successor, Ralph Northam, a fellow Democrat, said that he had restored voting rights for an additional 69,000 Virginians by 2021. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has moved at a far more glacial pace. After restoring more than 4,300 Virginians' rights in his first year, he dismantled the accelerated procedures adopted by his predecessors and restored a mere 1,641 people's rights in 2024. The Supreme Court has long held that felony-disenfranchisement measures do not typically violate the federal Constitution, citing the widespread historical practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 2023, however, voting rights groups brought a novel legal challenge to Virginia's disenfranchisement clause in federal court by arguing that it violated the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870. The somewhat obscure Reconstruction-era federal law imposed certain conditions on the formerly rebellious state before it could regain its representation in Congress. The Civil War is often described as a conflict between 'the Union' and 'the Confederacy,' with two competing groups of states that were organized under two different 'national' governments. Legally speaking, however, the Confederate States of America never existed. No foreign government ever recognized it as an independent country. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1869 case Texas v. White that secession had been unconstitutional and that the 'Confederate states,' including Virginia, never actually left the Union during the Civil War. How those states would be governed after the war was the principal question of Reconstruction. In 1867, Congress passed its first Reconstruction Act to divide the South into five military districts and place them under martial law. The goal was to 'readmit' the states into the Union by drafting new state constitutions that, among other things, enfranchised the formerly enslaved Americans. Since those states had never legally left the Union, readmission in this context meant the restoration of both civil government in each state and, most importantly, their representation in Congress. Congress reserved the right to approve the newly drafted state constitutions and compel changes before readmitting their representatives. In the Virginia Readmission Act, Congress required Virginia to never deprive any citizen from holding office on 'account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude' and forbade the state from amending its constitution to 'deprive any citizen or class of citizens' of the 'school rights' provided by that state constitution. The implicit goal was to ensure that free Black Americans could fully participate in postwar civil society. Most importantly, at least for this lawsuit, the Virginia Readmission Act required that Virginia's state constitution 'shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the right to vote by the Constitution herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law.' To that end, the state's 1870 constitution only disenfranchised Virginians for a handful of specific high crimes like bribery, embezzlement, and treason, in addition to other common-law felonies. After Reconstruction ended in the late 1870s, however, Redeemer governments in Virginia sought to roll back the state's expansive franchise. Those efforts culminated in the state's 1902 Constitutional Convention, which suppressed Black voting power in Virginia by enacting the usual menu of Jim Crow tactics, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. It also added provisions to deny the vote to anyone convicted of certain non-felony crimes like 'petit larceny' and 'obtaining money or property under false pretenses' that could be arbitrarily applied to Black Virginians. Most of those barriers were dismantled by the Supreme Court's civil rights rulings and federal voting rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s. The felon-disenfranchisement provision reached its current form when Virginia rewrote its constitution for the most recent time in 1971: 'No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote unless his civil rights have been restored by the governor or other appropriate authority.' Its breadth and the wholly discretionary nature of its relief are unmatched by any other state. In their 2023 lawsuit, a group of Virginians and voting rights organizations argued that the 1971 language violated the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870. They claim that the federal law only allows Virginia to disenfranchise for felonies that would have existed at the time. 'In 1870, 'common law' felonies were widely understood to be a distinct category of crime from 'statutory' felonies,' the complaint explained. 'The nine 'common law' felonies were murder, manslaughter, arson, burglary, robbery, rape, sodomy, mayhem, and larceny.' Virginia's current criminal statutes include numerous felonies that were not treated as such in the Reconstruction era. Some of the individual plaintiffs pointed to the state's drug laws, since controlled-substance crimes would not emerge for another few decades, to address opium. 'In fact, Virginia first criminalized drug sales in 1904, punishing as a misdemeanor certain sales of opium, and then made possession of cocaine with intent to distribute a statutory felony in 1908,' they claimed. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected part of their lawsuit, arguing that the plaintiffs could not use Section 1983—the primary legal mechanism for federal civil rights claims—to sue Virginia or state officials on these grounds. But it allowed the claims to go forward under a Supreme Court precedent known as Ex parte Young. In that 1908 case, the high court held that litigants could sue a state in federal court in some circumstances for allegedly violating a federal law, even if that law does not provide an explicit right to do so. The defendants, which currently include the state Board of Elections and its members, had argued for a narrow interpretation of Young. They argued, among other things, that Young did not apply if Congress had a different enforcement mechanism in mind when drafting the law in question. In this case, they pointed to Congress's ability to expel Virginia's congressional delegation as an alternative way to enforce the law. They also argued that there were no 'judicially manageable standards' for a federal court to use when crafting a remedy, which the Supreme Court has previously required in Young cases. In its 18-page ruling, the Fourth Circuit panel concluded otherwise. It rejected the notion that Congress's expulsion power was envisioned as the remedy, calling it a 'far cry' from the usual practice of finding a more explicit means to enforce the law. The panel also found it feasible to craft a consistent rule to enforce the law. 'To be sure, interpreting and applying this statute may not always be easy,' the court conceded. But it added that interpreting federal statutes is 'a familiar judicial exercise, one for which there is a superabundance of tools that federal judges employ every day.' The defendants asked the Supreme Court to intervene in March, describing the lower court's ruling as a threat to state sovereignty. 'The Fourth Circuit's ruling that the Readmission Acts are judicially enforceable invites courts to wade into the political decisions that restored the rebel states to federal representation more than 150 years ago, calling into question Congress's continuing determination that the states have republican governments and are entitled to representation,' they told the justices in their petition for review. 'This alarming consequence flows from the lower court's misinterpretation of the Readmission Acts, which Congress never intended private parties to enforce.' The implications of the Fourth Circuit's ruling go far beyond the Old Dominion. As the Virginia officials noted in their petition, they are not the only state for whom Congress drafted a Readmission Act during Reconstruction. The attorneys general for Texas and 16 other states filed a friend-of-the-court brief where they raised a cavalcade of objections to the Fourth Circuit's ruling beyond its interpretation of Young. 'Judicial enforcement of the Acts against the States would also violate the anticommandeering doctrine, allow Congress to control voter qualifications, and violate the equal-sovereignty doctrine by treating the ten covered states different [sic] from all others,' Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told the justices in the brief. (Tennessee, the eleventh state held by Confederates, had already regained congressional representation before the Readmission Acts were passed.) He also argued that the dispute was a 'political question' reserved for the elected branches. If the Supreme Court declines to hear the case or sides with the lower court, the Fourth Circuit's decision will radically reshape Virginia's approach to felon disenfranchisement. It could also have significant consequences for the other nine states. Paxton noted, for example, that Mississippi and Texas would be bound by similar language on disenfranchisement from the Readmission Acts. While the two states have less restrictive disenfranchisement measures than Virginia, allowing the ruling to stand could expand them even further. Paxton also pointed to a 2020 Fifth Circuit ruling that allowed a Young claim under the Readmission Acts to go forward against Mississippi. Like its Virginia counterpart, the Mississippi act included a provision requiring the postwar state constitution to create a 'uniform' system of free public schools. Subsequent versions of the Mississippi state constitution dropped the 'uniform' part, which the plaintiffs claimed had led to significant disparities in school funding and quality, depending on the community's racial makeup and income level. 'School litigation is complicated enough under state law—it does not need a federal overlay,' Paxton claimed, quoting from a dissenting Fifth Circuit judge. 'But litigants could see the Fourth Circuit's decision, as well as the Fifth Circuit's, as an opportunity to combine the Readmission Acts with Ex parte Young to 'pave the way for federal court orders to effect a major restructuring of state school funding.' The Court should reject such efforts.' These arguments will likely meet a friendly ear at the high court. The six-justice conservative majority has spent the last two decades dismantling federal protections for voting rights and civil rights, often by invoking the doctrines cited in the states' briefs. Chief Justice John Roberts all but pulled the equal-sovereignty doctrine out of thin air to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in 2013. Just last year, the court effectively wrote the disqualification clause out of the Fourteenth Amendment, a postwar measure to keep rebels and insurrectionists out of public office, to avoid applying it to then-candidate Donald Trump. The justices have already signaled some interest in the case. After the Virginia officials filed their petition in March, the plaintiffs waived their right of response, a common time-saving move in appeals that the responding side thinks are unlikely to succeed. The court specifically requested that the plaintiffs file a response less than two weeks later. That does not guarantee the court's intervention down the road, by any means. But it signals that at least some of the justices may be interested in taking it up. They will likely announce a final decision on whether to hear the case by the end of the current term in late June.
