Hey there,

Welcome back to another edition of Virginia Capital, Dogwood’s economic policy newsletter that puts workers first.

I want to extend my deep thanks to everyone who came out for Dogwood’s first live event in Annandale on Tuesday. I was lucky enough to emcee the occasion and moderate an excellent panel on healthcare policy in Virginia.

The energy at our event was great. Our speakers delved into the problems of our social safety net and campaign finance laws with intelligence, depth, and good humor. I felt more alive, less alienated, and more grounded being in that room full of other people all thinking about the same problems.

Have an idea for Dogwood’s next event? Drop me a line at michaeloconnor@couriernewsroom.com.

Below, I survey day two of the federal government shutdown in Virginia and offer an update on the governor’s race.

Plus, a good long look at how a former University of Virginia law professor harmed our understanding of the US Constitution.

Michael O’Connor

Reporter, Dogwood

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. speaks to reporters at the Capitol, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

It’s day two of the government shutdown, a cold reality that’s settling in across Virginia.

Parents are talking about it at their kid’s dance practice. Restaurants and bars are dusting off sandwich and drink specials from previous shutdowns. School districts and local governments are letting parents and community members know how they can find help.

And reporters, like me, are looking for people to talk to about how the shutdown is impacting them.

(As a reminder, my email is michaeloconnor@couriernewsroom.com. Let’s talk.)

Last night, I checked in with two family members who serve in the Army, one who lives in Virginia and another who’s elsewhere in the US. They are still working. The big question on their minds was whether they would get paid in two weeks.

The math here is pretty simple: a shorter shutdown means less pain for working Virginians. The longer people go without paychecks, the more hardship there will be.

As I’ve mentioned in this space before: About half of all federal workers make between $50,000 and $109,999 a year, according to a January report by the Pew Research Center, and one in four earn under $70,000, meaning delayed paychecks could strain their household budgets as they pay their mortgages, rent, and other bills.

But try telling that to conservatives, who, whether they’re trolling me on the internet, or the country from the White House, want you to think public service is a sham.

In the days ahead, I expect Virginia Democrats will continue to pressure President Donald Trump to come to his senses about protecting the health care of millions of Americans (including his supporters) and to push for better support for struggling federal workers.

And you can expect me to continue looking into this story and what it means for Virginia.

You can read my coverage here.

Evan Goodenow at the Loudoun Times-Mirror has the scoop on contract negotiations between the Loudoun Education Association and Loudoun County Public Schools going into mediation.
Kunle Falayi, a data journalist with the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO, reports how the Trump administration’s new H-1B visa fees “could stun Virginia companies.”
Action alert: The Richmond Education Association is rallying the community to push back on proposed changes the union says undermines collective bargaining. Check out how to get involved here.

Abigail Spanberger taking questions from reporters in Fairfax County on September 19. (Michael O’Connor/Dogwood)

For much of the commentariat, the shutdown is being seen through the lens of Virginia’s governor’s race.

Will voters blame Republicans or Democrats for the shutdown? Which party does it hurt more at the ballot box?

There is polling indicating that more Americans blame Trump and Republicans, but I’m inclined to believe people have made up their minds about this race already.

CNN had a nice piece in this vein that ended thusly: “(One voter) said he isn’t sure which party he blames for the shutdown. ‘It’s just, like, par for the course,’ he said.”

Shutdown aside, it seems more clear that the top issue for voters is the economy. This has come up in previous surveys, and it did so again in a poll published today by Emerson College.

The Emerson poll found that the top issue for Virginai voters was the economy at 35%, followed by threats to democracy at 20%. That bodes well for Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who has made affordability central to her pitch to voters.

Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears has centered her campaign around going after the rights of trans children. Just 27% of those surveyed found transgender issues to be very important, compared with 79% who found the economy to be very important.

The poll showed Spanberger with a 10-point lead over Earle-Sears with Election Day just about a month away and early voting already underway.

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s (NVTC) Titans breakfast gathering in McLean in 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The UVA law professor I mentioned above? It was none other than Antonin Scalia, who moved his family to Charlottesville in 1967 to teach at the law school.

According to a UVA web page, Scalia was a faculty member at UVA from 1967 to 1974. From there, Scalia would go on to, as historian Jill Lepore tells it in a cover story for the October issue of The Atlantic, re-shape the way we think about the US Constitution and our ability to change it for the times.

For Scalia, the US constitution was not a living document that should be amended.

“It’s dead. Dead, dead, dead!” he’d say, according to Lepore.

That’s because Scalia wanted Americans to interpret its founding document under the novel idea that we should defer to the Framers’ original intent.

Lepore’s piece does an excellent job of showing just how radical a break from the norm this interpretive intervention by conservatives like Scalia was, and how we are all still living with its dramatic consequences.

As the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once said of President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general’s use of originalism:

“The attorney general uses original intent not as a neutral principle at all but only as a means of getting certain results for the Reagan administration. He is shamelessly selective.”

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