FEBRUARY 28, 2026

“Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.”

— Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

Today I write to share some news from my little corner of Northern Virginia. Here in Virginia’s Hunt Country, one would think that we might be isolated from the Leftist shenanigans that plague the more urbanized suburbs of Washington, D.C. One would be wrong. It seems that the more money and leisure one has, the more liberal one becomes. And impervious to common sense.

For example, to our East, data centers dot the landscape in Loudoun, Fairfax, and Prince William Counties. And to our West, data centers are proposed to be placed in Frederick County, where family farmers are hoping to cash out, and probably retire somewhere outside the Commonwealth and the reach of the Richmond Democrats. But the Leftists who were driven out of Loudoun and Fairfax County due to high prices are now ensconced in Winchester and surrounding environs. They are loud, obnoxious, and hostile to any economic development. They actually believe, and proclaim, that data centers will drive up electricity rates and drain the aquafers of all the water. They are wrong of course, but never in doubt.

Sadly, my mogul client has bought into this claptrap. Normally, he is an astute and knowledgeable fellow. But having retired, all he does is play golf, smoke cigars, and count his money. And when he finishes with that, he reads The Winchester Star, which pollutes his mind. He needs to wander over to my neck of the woods, and pick up a copy of The Washington Times. In any event, I am sharing this 1st article to educate him (and others) on this issue.

The 2nd article addresses the creeping socialism that seems to have seized most Virginians. It is a disease that must be confronted, defeated, and destroyed. And its purveyors should be deported to North Korea, whether they are from there or not.

Blame radical Democrats’ environmental policies for skyrocketing electricity costs

Data centers are not the problem

BY:          Senator Cynthia Lummis (R. Wy.), The Washington Times (February 20, 2026).

Don’t fall for the misguided backlash against data centers. The data center build-out is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lower prices for everyday Americans, but only if we stop treating “building” like a four-letter word.

Americans don’t need another lecture about why their power bill is “complicated.” They need affordability and a grid that doesn’t break every time the weather gets serious.

So when Green New Scam politicians and activists point to data centers and say, “There’s your culprit,” it’s tempting to believe them. Big new energy-hungry buildings are easy to see.

The real drivers of high prices are harder: years of decay, bureaucratic red tape and environmentalist shell games.

Here’s the truth: Electricity costs nearly three times as much in states with the most aggressive green policies. In states forcing extreme green targets of 50% or higher, residential rates jump about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, a $53.40 monthly spike for the average American household.

In ultra-blue Democratic strongholds such as California, “green” mandates have made it nearly impossible to build anything. They have killed investment and slashed our reliable energy supply right when America needs it most for economic resurgence, new families, manufacturing, and the artificial intelligence data centers driving our global dominance.

Your electric bill is basically two things: the electricity you use and the system that delivers it (poles, pipelines, wires, transformers, substations, reliability and repairs). A huge share of that delivery system is fixed cost. It’s the membership fee you pay just to be connected, whether you run one lamp or a whole factory.

When that fixed-cost part of the system is underused, everyone’s share of the “membership fee” is higher, and vice versa: When more of it is used, it pushes down prices for everyone else. Experts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory confirm this.

To say data centers are to blame for higher costs? That’s nonsense. In Virginia, where data centers consume 25.6% of the state’s electricity, the nation’s highest, rates rose a mere 3%, while paying for schools and bringing in jobs. Maine, with hardly any data centers, suffered a whopping 36% increase, 12 times Virginia’s.

The commonwealth of Virginia was run by commonsense Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, while Maine has suffered under eight years of total Democratic control. Places that make it hardest to build power plants and pipelines don’t become morally superior. They become more expensive.

President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda, combined with deregulation and pro-growth policies, will deliver lower prices and a better grid for everyday Americans. In January, he made a square deal with Microsoft: It will pay its way, protecting families from higher bills.

The answer to rising demand isn’t “Ban it”; it’s “Build more.” When we add steady demand and build more supply, we spread fixed costs, lower prices and make the grid stronger.

To make “Build more” real, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, through the Energy Dominance Financing Office, is rapidly accelerating America’s reliable energy build-out. In Congress, Republicans are fighting for commonsense, direly needed permitting reform to cut red tape and embrace a culture that builds.

For a generation, America acted as if building was optional, until it showed up in higher bills, fragile grids and communities losing opportunity. Americans can handle the truth:

Growth, dynamism and innovation are the cornerstones of who we are.

When we prevent building, as far-left politicians say we should, we stagnate or, worse, decline. If we want lower prices, then we have to make it possible to build reliable power and the infrastructure to deliver it quickly, predictably and without endless procedural sabotage.

America deserves nothing less.

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Democrats’ foreigners-turned-voters scam lets it pursue crony socialism

Left turning America into ‘We are the World’

BY:          Robert Knight, The Washington Times (February 23, 2026).

A city board in northwestern Virginia voted Tuesday to remove the Pledge of Allegiance as the opener for its meetings.

One of the Winchester Planning Commission’s liberal female members blew off the tradition as “pageantry,” and another called it “unnecessary.” Without discussion, they voted 4-2 to toss the Pledge into the hopper.

This is in line with what Democrats are doing to Virginia now that they have taken total control in Richmond. They are converting the cradle of America’s founding into a liberal hothouse where things such as patriotism are considered retro and perhaps even fascist.

Led by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who shucked off her “moderate” mask the moment she took power, Democrats are giving New York City’s communist/Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a run for his money in the race-to-the-left sweepstakes.

Virginia lawmakers have been quick to introduce tax increases, climate change activism, the LGBTQ agenda, anti-gun laws and a mind-boggling gerrymandering scheme that would give Democrats nine congressional seats and leave only one Republican seat.

Senate Bill 624 would add “Islamophobia” to the state’s hate crime law. The bill defines it as “malicious prejudice or hatred directed toward Islam or Muslims” and requires state police to track it in hate crime reporting.

This might sound OK (after all, who is for “malicious prejudice or hatred?”) except that Democrats have redefined “hatred” as disagreeing with them on any given issue.

If you oppose subjecting children to sex change treatments, that’s “transphobia.” Objecting to school curricula that teach children a false history of America as uniquely evil among nations is “racist.”

How about if a pastor or priest tells the truth to his congregation about Islamist persecution and mass murders of Christians around the world? Would that be considered “hate speech”? You bet it will if the Islamization of America, which is well underway, continues apace.

Democrats, who invented Jim Crow laws, have been using the race card since the 1960s to win elections and discourage fraud investigations. They use newly arrived immigrants as pawns, ensnaring them in welfare dependency before turning them into voters.

In Democratic-run Minnesota, where $9 billion in welfare money has apparently been stolen in recent years, anyone asking about it was accused of racism. That’s because nearly all the fraud has been found in the state’s burgeoning Somali Muslim community.

In the January edition of Imprimis, Hillsdale College’s monthly publication, Scott W. Johnson of Power Line laid out the immense scandal, which is spreading to other states.

Somalis began resettling in America in the 1990s as refugees from a civil war, and now number more than 100,000 in the Twin Cities area. They have received billions of dollars in taxpayer aid, some of which has been harvested for Democratic campaigns.

At a recent hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, put Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on the hot seat. He accused Mr. Ellison of taking at least $10,000 from Feeding Our Future, a group that fraudulently raked in about $300 million in taxpayer money. Mr. Ellison repeatedly denied the allegation, calling Mr. Hawley a liar despite the damning evidence.

In 2020, federal agents raided various Feeding Our Future sites allegedly feeding thousands of children a day. “The kids were nowhere to be seen,” said Mr. Johnson. “Government overseers were easily scared off by absurd claims of racism — charges that continue to be leveled even today.”

As for Minnesota’s top officials — Gov. Tim Walz, Mr. Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — they do a Sgt. Schultz from “Hogan’s Heroes” and “know nothing,” or they unconvincingly pretend to be fraud busters.

Then there’s Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat. She is on record declaring her fealty to Somalia, and she sponsored the federal MEALS Act, which facilitated the Feeding Our Future fraud. Her Twin Cities district is at the center of the scandal, but she says she had no idea.

Circling back to Virginia, the Minnesota scandal should be a warning that a fast infusion of foreigners turned voters can create a political climate in which Democrats can pursue crony socialism, aided by a complicit media.

Fueled by jobs in the high-tech corridor near Washington Dulles International Airport, a tsunami of demographic change benefiting Democrats has occurred in Northern Virginia over the past decade.

For example, Loudoun County, once the most Republican jurisdiction in the Washington metro area, is now a Democratic stronghold. President Biden won there by 25 percentage points in 2020 and Kamala Harris by 16 points in 2024. Ms. Spanberger won by 29 points in 2025.

Not coincidentally, Loudoun, which has 450,000 residents, is now about 27% foreign-born, double the national average.

The point here is not about immigrants per se, just the sheer numbers. Immigrants have enriched America since its founding, and many new citizens are prouder to be Americans than their neighbors are. Still, the melting pot needs time to work. The problem is that some immigrants, such as Islamists who adhere to Shariah, will never assimilate. As a group, new arrivals vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

This is perhaps why Democrats in Northern Virginia and New York City, where nearly 40% of the population is foreign-born, seem less inclined to identify as Americans and more disposed to moral relativism and a globalist mindset.

If that sounds like an oversimplification, then it might be worth asking the liberal planning commission members in Winchester why they threw the Pledge of Allegiance under the bus.

It’s also worth asking why Senate Republicans haven’t passed the SAVE America Act to ensure that only U.S. citizens with photo IDs can vote.

GFK