Glenn Youngkin

Trump May Have Back-Tracked But The GOP Has Supported Restricting Contraceptives For Years
Will Republicans Take No For An Answer On Abortion? Prime Badge

A couple pod episodes ago I told Kate Riga that I didn’t quite understand what was going on in the Virginia legislative races. It was being treated as a very close run thing in which Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin stood a very real chance of getting the full control of the state legislature he needed to pass a 15 week abortion ban. Was that really plausible since Virginia is basically a blue state, with maybe a few shades of purple, and abortion bans have been a loser pretty much everywhere? As she rightly explained, that was the consensus. But it was more vibes than data. There wasn’t much polling. (There seldom is for state legislative races since news organization don’t have the incentive or the money to poll multiple key races.) It was mainly based on the continuing perception of Youngkin as an electoral golden boy who managed to win the governorship in what is now a reliably blue state.

And yet, he put it all on the line and got … well, smoked. He didn’t capture the Senate and Democrats have also taken back the House of Delegates. In electoral terms, abortion remains a way that Republicans abort themselves. And a lot of them keep doing it. Moths to a flame, really. And here we are.

Read More 
Youngkin Admin Admits It Removed Thousands Of Legal Voters From Rolls By Accident
This is your TPM evening briefing.
Where Things Stand: GOPers Keep Trying To Embrace The Thing They Literally Just Hated
This is your TPM evening briefing.

Republicans are continuing to backtrack on years of conspiracy-theory precedent after last year’s midterms taught them that demonizing certain popular types of voting for the sake of Donald Trump’s grievances might not be the best way to win friends and influence people.

The latest MAGA fan and one-time Big Liar to embrace the Republican National Committee’s early-voting about-face initiative: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Read More 
Youngkin Campaign Lashes Out At High School Student On Twitter, Then Deletes Tweet
INSIDE: That So-Called 'Legitimate Political Discourse' ... Canadian Truckers ... Todd Gitlin
Where Things Stand: Trolls Flood Youngkin’s Teacher-Reporting Tip Line, As They Should
This is your TPM evening briefing.

He should’ve known.

As we know, Virginia’s new Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is working furiously to make good on his campaign promise to essentially make combatting Republican grievances, real and imagined, the top priority of the Virginia state government. We wrote recently about his reversal of the state’s universal masking policy for schools. He also moved to ban the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts” (read: “Critical Race Theory”) in public schools on Day One.

During an interview with conservative radio host John Fredericks earlier this week, Youngkin announced a new tip line his administration had set up, asking parents to notify the state government with reports of public teachers “behaving objectionably,” aka talking about race and systemic racism in the classroom, concepts that the GOP continues to squeeze beneath the ill-suited label “Critical Race Theory” — an academic framework that’s ruffled the right into hysterics in recent months.

Read More 
Defiant School Boards Across Virginia Sue Over Youngkin’s Anti-Mask Order
Where Things Stand: Hundreds Of Schools Defy Virginia’s New GOP Guv
This is your TPM evening briefing.

School district officials who oversee hundreds of schools in Virginia are actively defying their new Republican governor’s efforts to tamp down COVID-19 mitigation measures in the state.

The backlash is similar to what we saw play out in Texas and Florida when Republican Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis enacted similar executive orders late last year, attempting to block individual schools and municipalities from creating their own policies for combatting the pandemic.

Read More 
Virginia’s New GOP Guv Dives Headfirst Into School Mask Mandate War
Where Things Stand: McAuliffe Campaign Says Turnout Wasn’t The Problem Prime Badge
This is your TPM evening briefing.

Guest hosted today by TPM reporter Kate Riga.

In an election post-mortem, the Terry McAuliffe gubernatorial campaign in Virginia highlighted some of its findings in the immediate wake of Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory.

Read More 
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: