By Paul Angel
Virginia is a lovely state. We have the Blue Ridge Mountains, beautiful rivers, a long coastline on the Chesapeake Bay, and lots of American history, from Revolutionary War-era mansions and famed battlefields to omnipresent Civil War memorials, and more. Upon the exit of conservative Gov. Glen Youngkin, Virginia also had a $2.7 billion budget surplus. That is not going to last long.
Click the Link Below to Listen to the Audio of this Article
On Jan. 17, 2026, Democrat “centrist” and “moderate” Abigail Spanberger was sworn in as governor of the Old Dominion.
Over and again people told me that “Abigail is a moderate. You don’t have to worry about her.” They chose to ignore my critiques. Unfortunately, I was right. Upon entering office, Gov. Spanberger began issuing every kind of far-left executive order (EO) imaginable, undoing the previous governor’s excellent work in trying to de-wokify Virginia.
Mike Gonzalez, in an article in The Washington Examiner headlined “Virginia’s New ‘Centrist’ Governor Goes Full California on Day One,” gives us the bad news:
What a difference four years makes. Now that she has been sworn in as governor of the Old Dominion herself, after running as a “centrist” and being portrayed by the media as such, Abigail Spanberger is pulling a “Joe Biden” on everything from abortion to anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
Her far-leftist playbook has conservatives shaking their heads and saying, “Told ya so.”
Spanberger, a former CIA officer (that should have been a red flag) adept at propaganda, had been smart enough during the campaign to make sure she didn’t repeat the same mistake as Democrat gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe did in his debates with Youngkin in 2021: Tell how he really felt about the hot-button issues.
In those debates, McAuliffe defended his position on full-term abortion as a woman’s right and also insisted that parents really shouldn’t have any say in their child’s public school curriculum. Those comments cost him the election in a state Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020.
As an example of her practiced duplicity, when asked by GOP gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears at the 2025 debate if Spanberger would object to one of her teenaged daughters having to dress and undress with a transsexual man in a sports locker room or share a bathroom with a grown man, Spanberger knew to avoid that kind of campaign landmine by remaining completely silent.
I have no doubt Spanberger is revulsed by the idea of her partially unclothed teenaged daughters spending time in any enclosed space with a man who says he is a woman, but she is a devout Democrat and, hence, must support what the party tells her to. There really is no debate about that. If you are a Democrat politician in America today, you have to like weird things—or at least pretend to.
Cleverly, Spanberger instead left it to her boosters in the left-wing media to continue to speak for her without revealing her truly radical bent.
Faithfully, her allies in the media did their job. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post threw in the word “moderate” in any headline about Spanberger (or, for that matter, New Jersey’s new female Gov. Mikie Sherrill). “Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill are moderate women,” chimed the Times “The two congresswomen, both moderates, have shared a Capitol Hill apartment for the past four years,” the Post echoed.
So, what has the “moderate centrist” Spanberger done since she assumed the office of governor a month ago? According to Americans for Tax Reform, she will (or has already):
- Impose a 3.8% net investment income tax on individuals, trusts, and estates beginning in 2027;
- Raise Virginia’s top marginal income tax rate on portfolio and passive income to 9.55%, on top of federal taxes. “Many think that this tax will only hit ‘the rich,’ but most Americans are invested in the market.”
- Authorize a sales tax hike in various transportation districts, and imposes a new tax on each and every retail delivery in Northern Virginia;
- Pass an ammo tax equal to 11% of the gross receipts from the retail sale of a firearm or ammo by a dealer in firearms, firearms manufacturer, or ammunition vendor as an additional burden to gun owners;
- Extend retail sales taxes to previously exempt services; and
- Reinstate Virginia as a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a backdoor carbon tax. Membership comes with higher utility bills by design, which is why Youngkin pulled Virginia out of it.
Her executive orders have also:
- Rescinded a Youngkin executive order that had improved the commonwealth’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making Virginia, for all intent, a sanctuary state for illegal aliens; and
- Undone Youngkin’s attempt to enact reforms that were to make universities less woke and less overtly racist. According to Gonzalez:
Power will go back to a professoriate that has been totally captured by the left, and which will soon go back to running diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that run afoul of … the Constitution.
As for abortion, Spanberger—as did former Govs. Ralph Northam and McAuliffe—is now openly supporting a Virginia constitutional amendment that would permit abortion-on-demand until birth.
I enjoyed Youngkin’s stint as governor. Most Virginians are better off. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s firing of so many Northern Virginians by DOGE had tens of thousands of voting families fuming—and motivated. Earle-Sears didn’t stand a chance.
I hope Spanberger—this wolf in ewe’s clothing—doesn’t shear us all.
But beware: There are more members of this hair-raising genus, Lupus spanbergis, hiding in the political woods, ready to pounce and turn your state into California, too!
Paul Angel is AFP’s managing editor. He can be reached at Paul@AmericanFreePress.net.
(function() {
var zergnet = document.createElement(‘script’);
zergnet.type=”text/javascript”; zergnet.async = true;
zergnet.src = (document.location.protocol == “https:” ? “https:” : “http:”) + ‘//www.zergnet.com/zerg.js?id=88892’;
var znscr = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0];
znscr.parentNode.insertBefore(zergnet, znscr);
})();
