Spanberger ripped after taking credit for billions in investments secured under GOP predecessor: ‘Pathetic’
Virginia’s Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger took credit for billions in economic achievements secured under her GOP predecessor, earning her backlash from Republican leaders and their representatives running the state before she got there. Spanberger touted signing legislation that authorized four separate investments from the aerospace, energy and pharmaceutical industries earlier this week. The investments, according to a press release from Spanberger’s office, would welcome 3,250 new jobs and $7.1 billion in business investment to the state. “From my very first day in office, I have been working to create a stable business environment so companies can hire, expand, and continue to invest in our Commonwealth,” Spanberger said in her press release. “I am signing these bills into law so we can continue to grow Virginia’s economy and create opportunities for Virginians.” However, Spanberger’s signature was effectively just a formality, as the deals she touted were part of previous Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s broader push to spur economic development as governor of Virginia, which included a record of $156 billion in total CEO commitments during his term. As he was exiting office, the former GOP governor garnered more than the previous six gubernatorial administrations combined, according to a press release from Youngkin’s team. BIDEN ALLY TELLS SPANBERGER TO EXIT ‘BUNKER’ AS EX-GOV RENEWS DEBATE PUSH “She’s trying to take credit for somebody else’s work,” former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News Digital. “In grade school we call that cheating.” “The last three months have been nothing but horrible news for Virginians as Abigail Spanberger broke every single promise she made on the campaign trail and now has the lowest approval rating of any Virginia governor this century,” added Youngkin spokesperson Justin Discigil. “Governor Youngkin is happy that Virginians are being reminded of some good news, even if it means Gov. Spanberger taking credit for the economic deals he secured for the Commonwealth.” Spanberger did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the matter. WHO IS ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, AND WHY DID DEMOCRATS CHOOSE HER FOR TO THEIR STATE OF THE UNION RESPONSE? The four bills she signed, which with her signature authorized the awards, were announced during Youngkin’s term as governor. The first, HB 1531, allocates $537 million to aerospace company Avio USA and is expected to create over 1,500 jobs. The award, according to public reports at the time, was announced in December 2025. The next bill, HB 799, will allocate $457 million and is expected to create over 825 jobs. This award was announced by Youngkin in September 2025. HB 800, allocating over $2 billion to pharmacuetical manufacturer Eli Lilly and expected to create more than 450 jobs to manufacture the active ingredient in major cancer, autoimmune and other advanced drugs, was announced in September 2025 as well. Meanwhile, rounding out the handful of investments touted by Spanberger this week was HB 1076, which invested $4 billion into pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and is expected to create around 500 jobs. That commitment was announced in October 2025. “Attracting new businesses and jobs to Virginia is a core focus of my administration — and I’m proud of the hundreds of millions of dollars in investment we have already announced this year,” Spanberger continued in her press release this week announcing the Virginia investments. “I look forward to continuing to work with legislators, local communities, and business leaders as we make clear that Virginia is the top state in the nation to grow or start a business.” In a background section of the press release, the announcement continues touting Spanberger’s commitment to growing Virginia’s economy. FORMER VIRGINIA GOV GLENN YOUNGKIN HINTS AT POLITICAL FUTURE, SAYS HE’S ‘CHOMPING AT THE BIT’ AFTER EXIT “My simple message for Abigail Spanberger is, to quote Elizabeth Warren, ‘You didn’t build that!’” Sean Kennedy, president of Virginians for Safe Communities, said. “Spanberger has to take credit for her Republican predecessor’s accomplishments bringing jobs to Virginia because her policies are actually raising taxes, killing jobs, and hiking energy costs. Spanberger has to play make believe that she is delivering on her affordability agenda to impress the 2028 Democratic Party kingmakers. I expect that Spanberger will nevertheless persist in her false claims.” Critics of Spanberger have questioned the moderate campaign message she campaigned on, as well as her economic strategy, which has included ushering in new taxes in the state despite campaigning on a message of affordability. “Abigail Spanberger’s first 100 days in office have been a disaster when it comes to economic development,” argued Miyares, who lost to current Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones in November. Jones infamously called for the murder of his GOP rival, something that ultimately did not matter enough for voters as he and Spanberger came out victorious in November. “Three pillars of a good business environment is a good tax environment, a good regulatory environment and an environment that – from a litigation perspective – is not anti-business. Spanberger has already indicated and done a rash of bills that will make Virginia less competitive. Virginia does not compete by itself, we compete with 49 other states, and Spanberger seems hellbent to hurt us with her tax, regulatory and litigation.” Miyares added that he was aware of multiple Virginia businesses that former Governor Youngkin had recruited and were thinking about expanding in Virginia, but will no longer do so as a result of Spanberger’s policies. He also pointed out that Spanberger “does not believe in energy abundance” despite touting energy infrastructure investments this week. “I find it in some ways laughable and pathetic what she is attempting to do,” Miyares said. “Abigail Spanberger inherited a $2.7 billion surplus and benefitted from hundreds of thousands of new jobs created under Republican leadership,” the Virginia GOP added in February, in response to headlines about rising Virginia unemployment numbers. “Her and her Democrat allies are squandering it all in a matter of weeks while breaking every promise they made on ‘affordability.’”
Trump trashes MTG after Republican wins contest to fill her old seat ‘despite the stench left by Greene’
President Donald Trump blasted former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday after Republican Clay Fuller won the special election runoff on Tuesday to fill Greene’s old seat in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown’s (GREEN TURNS TO BROWN UNDER STRESS!) seat in Congress has been taken over by a wonderful and talented man, Clay Fuller, who won convincingly, and right from the beginning, despite many people running for that ‘TRUMP’ +37 seat, and despite the stench left by Greene,” Trump declared in a Wednesday Truth Social post. “Congratulations to Clay Fuller, a very large improvement over his deranged predecessor!” the president added. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE SAYS TRUMP, GOP ‘GOVERNED AMERICA LAST,’ PREDICTS MIDTERM LOSSES While Greene won re-election to the district by more than 28% in 2024, unofficial results for the April 7 contest indicate that Fuller won by more than 11%. It also appears that far fewer people voted in the recent contest compared to the 2024 race, which occurred during a presidential election cycle. Greene declared in a post on X that the district “was never in danger of flipping blue, but the results speak for themselves. Trump flipping MAGA from America First to America Last, covering up for the Epstein files, and betraying key campaign promises of no more foreign wars has been the best help for the Democrats. Sad!” Greene, who was previously an ardent Trump supporter, had a falling out with the president last year and left office early this year in the middle of her two-year term. EX-TRUMP ALLY MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE JOINS LEFT-WING CALLS FOR THE 25TH AMENDMENT AS IRAN DEADLINE NEARS On Easter Sunday after Trump’s controversial Truth Social post threatening Iranian power plants and bridges, Greene blasted the president in a post on X, saying he had “gone insane.” “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump said in the post on Sunday. In part of a lengthy post on X, Greene asserted, “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness. I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.” Then on Tuesday, after Trump threatened that an entire “civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Greene called for removing the president from office via the 25th Amendment. REPUBLICANS WIN BUT DEMOCRATS ALSO CLAIM VICTORY WITH BALLOT BOX SURGE IN TRUMP TERRITORY “25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness,” she wrote in a post on X.
Colorado’s latest Supreme Court loss adds to growing string of culture war defeats
Colorado’s loss in the Supreme Court’s Kaley Chiles case last week marked the third time in recent years the justices have rebuked the state in a major culture-war dispute, adding to a growing pattern of high-profile reversals in cases over speech, religion and anti-discrimination law. The high court’s decision was the latest in a trio of lawsuits that backfired for Colorado, after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission lost in court to a cake baker in a key religious liberty case and after a website designer won a similar battle against the state’s civil rights division. Conservative legal experts said the legal setbacks for the state were not a coincidence. “Colorado seems hell-bent on enforcing its own new orthodoxy of thought, and the Supreme Court has had to come back time and time again to correct them and to remind them that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, even when the state may disagree with a person’s opinions,” Carrie Severino, president of the legal watchdog JCN, told Fox News Digital. The Supreme Court last week found that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, signed into law in 2019 by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, violated the First Amendment because it only restricted talk therapy when the therapy aimed to prevent minors from embracing being transgender or gay. SUPREME COURT BLOCKS COLORADO’S SO-CALLED ‘CONVERSION THERAPY’ BAN ON FIRST AMENDMENT GROUNDS In response to a question from Fox News Digital about the apparent theme, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jim Campbell said the state “has proven itself to be no respecter of the First Amendment.” “I don’t think at this point that it’s coincidental,” said Campbell, who represented Chiles before the Supreme Court during oral arguments. “The State of Colorado has shown an utter disregard for the First Amendment rights of people like Kaley Chiles.” JONATHAN TURLEY: THIS BLUE STATE’S LATEST ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH IS AWFUL AND SNEAKY, TOO In Chiles v. Salazar, the high court found 8-1 that the state law discriminated based on viewpoint. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority opinion that such laws suppressing speech on that basis amounted to an “‘egregious’ assault” on the Constitution. “The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country,” Gorsuch wrote. The case centered on Chiles, a licensed faith-based counselor in Colorado Springs, who argued that she helped youths reach their own stated goals, which she said could include minors seeking counseling on their sexuality and gender identity. COLORADO HOUSE ADVANCES CONVERSION THERAPY LAWSUIT BILL Colorado argued it was allowed to regulate Chiles’ therapy because it amounted to professional conduct and the state wanted to protect minors from Chiles’ perceived harmful counseling. The decision followed a landmark ruling in 2023, when the Supreme Court found 6-3 in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that the First Amendment barred Colorado from using the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act to force a website designer to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. The high court said in the ruling that the state could not force a person to create content conveying a message that he or she disagreed with. That ruling was viewed at the time as a broad free speech win that followed the Supreme Court’s narrower 2018 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In that case, the justices sided with baker Jack Phillips, finding that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had shown unconstitutional hostility toward his religious beliefs that the commission did not show toward other bakers. “The Supreme Court found, at least at the time of Masterpiece Cakeshop, that Colorado’s state agency was acting in a way biased against a certain set of beliefs, and from what we can see that hasn’t changed in the intervening years,” Severino said. “Unfortunately, each time the Supreme Court has corrected them, they’ve only doubled down.” KAGAN TURNS ON LIBERAL ALLY JACKSON WITH FOOTNOTE JAB OVER FREE SPEECH Terry Schilling, president of the conservative American Principles, observed the trend in Colorado, saying in a statement provided to Fox News Digital that Democrats there “will stomp on the rights of anyone who stands in the way of the well-heeled gay and transgender lobby whether it is bakers, doctors, or desperate families.” “It should not take the lengthy legal battles or the Supreme Court to rein in the liberal war against reality,” Schilling said. “That is why fed-up Colorado families are appealing straight to voters to protect children from extremist Democrats,” Schilling added, citing his organization’s efforts to pass conservative ballot initiatives in the state. Outside the First Amendment cases, Colorado has also been a testing ground for other highly polarizing legal fights that made it to the Supreme Court. The justices in Trump v. Anderson unanimously reversed the state Supreme Court’s decision to remove President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential primary ballot over allegations that he had incited an insurrection, finding the state lacked the authority to remove him.
Raghav Chadha to form his own political party? AAP MP sparks speculation: ‘Interesting thoughts’
The speculation intensified after Chadha reshared on his Instagram Story a video posted by a supporter urging him to start a new party.
LDF vs UDF in Kerala, BJP vs Congress in Assam, NDA vs Congress-DMK in Puducherry: Opinion polls predict close contests
Opinion polls released just before the voting day predicted a third straight term for the ruling alliance in Assam, while suggesting a very tight battle in Kerala and Puducherry.
Delhi Horror: 35-year-old woman killed by boyfriend, body found in bed box; probe underway
A 35-year-old woman was murdered in Delhi’s Mangolpuri and her body hidden in a bed box at a PG accommodation.
Democrats seek to pause Texas’ social studies revamp over $70K grant from conservative think tank
The Texas Public Policy Foundation awarded the grant to Schreiner University’s Texas Center, which is led by a historian guiding the state in its social studies revision.
Dan Patrick says Republicans will “have a tough time” holding Texas House majority in November
The lieutenant governor’s remarks are the latest sign that Republicans are worried about the fall midterms. The GOP has controlled the state House since 2003 and currently has an 88-62 advantage.
Texas summer camps sue to block new internet rule, saying it threatens their ability to operate
A group of 19 camps said fiber-optic internet that lawmakers ordered them to install after last year’s floods is too expensive or impossible to get.
Dem lawmaker calls for TSA to bring back shoes-off airport security policy
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., is demanding that the Transportation Security Administration reintroduce its controversial policy requiring travelers to take off their shoes before going through airport security checkpoints. Duckworth called on the TSA to immediately reverse its move to end the “shoes-off” policy, calling former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision last summer to scrap the policy a “reckless act” that may put travelers at risk. “Secretary Noem’s decision to implement a shoes on policy on July 8, 2025, likely without meaningful consultation with TSA, was a reckless act,” Duckworth wrote in a letter to Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill. “Allowing a potentially catastrophic security deficiency to remain in place for seven months and counting betrays TSA’s mission,” she added. “At a minimum, TSA’s failure to swiftly implement corrective action warrants the immediate withdrawal of Secretary Noem’s reckless and dangerous policy that increases the risk of a terrorist smuggling a dangerous item onto a flight.” NEARLY 20-YEAR SHOE-OFF AIRPORT SECURITY POLICE IS ENDED BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION This comes after a classified watchdog report found that TSA scanners cannot effectively screen shoes, according to CBS News. Duckworth said the inspector general flagged the issue as urgent to Noem but that no action was taken. Duckworth said that the inspector general found that Noem’s policy shift had “inadvertently created a new security vulnerability in the system.” The former secretary’s failure to take corrective action after the report’s findings was “outrageous, unacceptable and dangerous to the flying public,” Duckworth said. The senator argues that TSA’s lack of response may violate federal law, writing that the agency missed a legally required 90-day deadline to outline corrective actions after receiving the watchdog’s report. “Such inaction violates Federal law, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance and DHS’s own directives,” Duckworth wrote. FLIGHT PASSENGERS SLAM AIRLINES FOR PUSHING EARLY BAG CHECKS EVEN WITH EMPTY BINS ON BOARD The previous policy requiring passengers to take off their shoes during TSA screening was implemented in 2006. The senator wrote that Noem’s policy change reflected a “willingness to gamble the American people’s security,” calling it a “stunning failure of leadership.” “We expect this change will drastically decrease passenger wait times at our TSA checkpoints, leading to a more pleasant and efficient passenger experience,” she said at the time. “As always, security remains our top priority. Thanks to our cutting-edge technological advancements and multi-layered security approach, we are confident we can implement this change while maintaining the highest security standards.” Duckworth accused Noem, who was removed by President Donald Trump last month and replaced by current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, of prioritizing politics over security. The senator wrote that Noem’s policy change reflected a “willingness to gamble the American people’s security,” calling it a “stunning failure of leadership.” “Secretary Noem’s willingness to gamble the American people’s security in an unsuccessful attempt to boost her popularity was, and remains, a stunning failure of leadership—particularly following President Trump’s decision to launch an unconstitutional war of choice against Iran that DHS has determined, “is causing a heightened threat environment in the United States,” she wrote.