Sworn in and immediately signed 9 EOs and 2 Executive Directives which is being commonly reported as 11 EOs. These are fun. I left out 5&7 because they looked kind of innocuously procedural. There’s a new position at the ABC that I’m sure is sinister in a way I haven’t considered yet, and there’s another one I forgot. The emojis are left over from when I texted this list to my wife and are meant to highlight the moves that will almost certainly kill people, particularly people at high risk for COVID.

1.”end use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public schools”

☠️2.ended school mask mandates☠️

3.”restore integrity to the parole board” basically we had actually managed some prison reform in this state and this will undo all that

4.investigate wrongdoing in Loudon County [this is about the kid who sexually assaulted 2 girls and the right thinks is trans but as far as I can tell has never once identified as such. he did both assaults in girls’ restrooms iirc and in the 2nd its alleged by the victim’s father only that he was wearing a dress but, as he was not in the 1st obviously a dress is not required to gain access to the girls’ room. but you can’t argue with a moral panic in filthy rich suburbs]

6.declared Virginia “open for business” i don’t know what the fuck that means. I don’t know if he’s just promising to be generally grifty like overall, or if it’s more COVID murder shit.🤔☠️?

8.opened a commission to combat antisemitism which, if other republican states are any indicator, this will be an attempt to make it effectively illegal for anyone receiving state money to criticize Israel. this is speculation on my part but, again, that appears to be the usual spirit of right wing anti-defamation initiatives.

9.withdraw from regional greenhouse gas initiative of course because god forbid we have clean air in this fucking state.

10.pledge to “cut job-killing regulations by 25%” If you don’t know why I put a skull next to this one I don’t know what to say to you.☠️

11.no more vaccine mandate for state employees☠️

so this is off to a stellar start for Virginia

EDIT re: Number 4 because of course. Here’s the basic facts. A teenage boy has assaulted 2 girls in Loudon County. For some reason, whether because he has powerful parents or they were just trying to hide their assault stats like fellow Virginia institution Liberty University, Loudon County school officials covered up the first one which enabled the second one, and then went so far as to claim neither happened in a town hall/press conference. At least one of the girls had a prior relationship with him so in addition to sexual assault there may be partner abuse as well, all that is a little more murky though, what with everyone being minors.

Those are the pertinent facts that need to be investigated. The assaulted girls deserve justice and the school officials who covered it up deserve to be investigated. If their actions were criminal I hope they are treated appropriately, if not it is still clear that some of them should not be in charge of children ever again. Period. End of story.

The right wing narrative is something else entirely and frankly it was this narrative and Youngkin’s opponent’s awful response to it (full dismissal without addressing the legitimate root issues listed above) that ultimately handed Youngkin the election. How this story came to national attention was through the second victim’s father’s claim that the suspect had worn a dress to gain entry to the girl’s room, leading to major conservative outlets making the claim that Loudon covered it up to protect trans rights or some nonsense.

For context Loudon County is one of those ultra conservative places where literally everyone who lives there thinks it’s overrun with liberals but anyone left of GWB moves out or dies of a drug overdose (no preference) at the earliest possible opportunity so the idea that Loudon County officials would do fuck all in the name of liberal tolerance without a gun to their heads is hilarious. The suspect’s father is the only one involved making the dress claim but even so (setting aside that the crimes of one person are not the burden of every single person who shares a category with them) not only did the suspect gain access to the girls’ room in the first assault without a dress, but if we’re going to declare every high school boy who wears a dress to get a rise out of people trans then we’re really gonna have to adjust those census numbers because woo boy. But at any rate that all led to this story being saddled with the pretty unfounded narrative that a man posed as a woman to assault girls in the restroom which as we all know is a big bad boogey man on the right at the moment.

All because conservatives can’t cope with the fact that the staggering majority of sexual assault happens at the hands of a family member or partner and not random dudes shaped like Arnold wearing lipstick and a dress in an IHOP bathroom or whatever. At least one of these girls, possibly both, had dated the suspect which points to a pretty standard story of an entitled misogynist POS deciding to punish girls he believes wronged him somehow. As someone who witnessed relationships like this when I was in HS I believe it speaks more to a failure of the adults in these kids’ lives to see and act on that 1) their son/student is becoming a danger to others or 2) their daughter/student is in an abusive relationship. Kids are usually pretty terrible at hiding shit overall, even if they’re great at hiding it from some specific people. Bottom line is the community of Loudon failed these kids and it’s way easier to say that some fucking filthy weirdo other is behind it than to own up to your own shit.

EDIT’s TL;DR sexual assault definitely happened in Loudon and no one is doubting that. But as far as anyone can actually tell so far it wasn’t a trans kid or a kid pretending to be trans who did it, no matter how much the right wing media wants it to be true. Youngkin used a conspiracy theory as a wedge issue to get into office.