Good afternoon, 

This is our last newsletter of the year. Thank you to everyone for supporting this effort we launched in July. It’s a privilege to write a newsletter like this and exciting to see people find value in it. 

The goal for this newsletter remains the same: Virginia Capital aims to be a resource of pro-labor state economic policy news, with a special emphasis on workers’ rights. 

I believe that on balance we’ve lived up to that goal. I hope to keep earning your trust and attention in the new year. 

This year-end edition is slightly different in that instead of One Big Story, I’m taking a look back at 2025 and then breaking out the Dogwood Tarot deck for what we might expect in 2026. 

Plus, I share the best things I read, listened to, and watched this year. 

A demonstrator holds a sign at a rally at George Mason University in Fairfax on August 1, 2025. (Michael O’Connor/Dogwood)

Reflecting back on 2025, I think about how the year began with the sinking feeling of President Donald Trump’s return to White House and is ending with the anticipation of Abigail Spanberger’s move to Virginia’s Governor’s Mansion next month. 

Trump’s second term has been so much worse than many of us expected, and Virginia has borne its share of this would-be monarch’s worst policies demonizing civil servants, immigrants, universities, and his critics. 

The Trump administration has proudly put hundreds of thousands of federal servants out of their jobs. NPR reports that by the end of the year, 317,000 federal employees will have left their jobs.

It’s hard to know just how many lived and worked in Virginia, but some have shared their stories and local officials have warned about the impacts to regional economies.

Their concerns have fallen on deaf ears when it comes to outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has consistently downplayed the impact of Trump’s cuts. 

That same deafness would eventually help doom Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’ bid to succeed Youngkin. 

By contrast, Spanberger’s sober assessment of the damage wrought by Trump and his loyalists in Virginia helped propel her to a landslide victory in November. 

Dogwood’s most-read political stories reflected these dominant storylines about Trump’s impact on Virginia and the statewide elections. 

VA Republicans silent as Trump’s Medicaid cuts blamed for rural clinics closing was number one, and Earle-Sears failed to secure police group endorsement. Here’s why, was number two. 

• Indoor farming company AeroFarms reversed course and now says it’s keeping open its Pittsylvania County facility, though it’s not clear if all 173 of its employees there will keep their jobs, Grace Mamon at Cardinal News reports.                                                                                                                            

• Political analyst Bob Holsworth breaks down Charlie Schmidt’s surprise victory in the Democratic firehouse primary for House District 77. Holsworth compares Schmidt’s campaign to that of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

• Peter Breslin has a column in The Virginian-Pilot on why people in jails and prisons deserve Medicaid coverage and care not just for moral reasons but also because it’s good public policy.   

(Petr Sidorov/unsplash)

A big question looming over 2026 is how Spanberger and Democrats in the General Assembly will make good on their campaign promises to make Virginia more affordable. 

We won’t have to wait too long to find out how their legislative priorities shake out, given the General Assembly session begins in January. 

Another question I keep coming back to is to what extent should workers’ rights be linked to this larger goal of improving affordability?

It seems fair to say giving workers more power to address their immediate concerns at their jobs would help them in the affordability fight. 

To this end, Spanberger and Democrats are looking to expand public sector bargaining so that teachers and county employees no longer have to get local approval to engage in collective bargaining.

If and when this happens, I expect there will be a lot of misinformation about what unions are and what workers are actually allowed to do. Here’s hoping I can help in the fight to get out the facts about unions. 

Then there is of course state Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy’s bill to repeal Virginia’s anti-union “right-to-work” law. 

It’s hard to know where this one is headed given Spanberger’s opposition and silence from other Democratic leaders on the issue.

(Jon Tyson/unsplash)

Finally, here are the best bits of culture I spent time with this year. 

The two best books I read this year were the 2023 dystopian novel, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, and Brian Goldstone’s There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, which also made former President Barack Obama’s year-end list. 

The best thing I listened to this year were the songs of Danny Go!. For those who don’t know, Danny Go!’s music is made for kids, but the production is good enough to play in your car. I also want to give special mention to this Minions song.  

Finally, the best show I watched this year was The Chair Company, and the best movie I watched was the 1999 film Topsy-Turvey, which dramatizes the 19th-century production of a comic opera. 

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