As soon as Gov. Abigail Spanberger was sworn in as Virginia’s 75th governor, the National Guard fired off the traditional 19-gun cannon salute. State police had issued an advisory that the ceremonial booms from the howitzers might be loud enough to activate car alarms and building alarms in downtown Richmond.
There’s no word on how far away the guns could be heard, but Spanberger’s inaugural address that followed included a sustained and unmistakable rhetorical shot at President Donald Trump.
“I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington,” Spanberger said. “You are worried about policies that are hurting our communities — cutting health care access, imperiling rural hospitals and driving up costs. You are worried about Washington policies that are closing off markets, hurting innovation and private industry, and attacking those who have devoted their lives to public service.”
If that wasn’t clear enough, there was more: “You are worried about an administration that is gilding buildings while schools crumble, breaking the social safety net and sowing fear across our communities — betraying the values of who we are as Americans, the very values we celebrate here on these steps.”
It was a theme Spanberger returned to later in the speech: “And in Virginia, our hardworking, law-abiding immigrant neighbors will know that when we say — we’ll focus on the security and safety of all of our neighbors, we mean them, too.”
The crowd in attendance at the State Capitol cheered those words loudly, and Spanberger’s delivery made it clear those weren’t throwaway lines. We’ll see in the days, weeks and months ahead how those lines resonate across the Potomac with a president who takes some things very personally.
The remarkable thing is that Spanberger didn’t have to say those words, so they seem akin to laying down a marker.
I’d divide her speech (you can read the full text here) into four parts:
* There was the standard call for unity, which probably every governor delivers. Maybe her quoting Patrick Henry — “Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs” — lands differently in these hyperpartisan times but calling for unity seems pretty boilerplate in an inaugural address.
* She delivered a history lesson that ran from the American Revolution through the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote, the 1965 Civil Rights Act and the election of Douglas Wilder as governor, placing her status as the first woman to assume the governorship in a long line of breakthroughs. When she quoted Linwood Holton, the first Republican governor since the tumult after the Civil War, his daughter, Anne Holton, appeared to tear up. When she referenced Wilder, “who changed what so many of our fellow citizens believed was even possible,” the state’s first Black governor (who turned 95 on Saturday) rose to acknowledge the crowd. Probably all Virginia governors have acknowledged the state’s long history; Spanberger’s acknowledgment was different but not unexpected under the circumstances.
* She touched briefly and generally on her policies. “We will tackle the high cost of housing … we will work to lower energy costs … and we will contend with an impending health care crisis.” Again, this is pretty standard. Inaugural addresses are not policy speeches, they are more florid, philosophical statements. In another quirk of the Virginia system, Spanberger will get another chance to speak on Monday, when she addresses the General Assembly — the second time in less than a week that legislators will have heard from a governor, just different ones. Those addresses tend to go into more detail, such as her fleeting reference to show she wants “high energy users [to] pay their fair share.” Those “high energy users” include data centers.
* That leaves the fourth, and most unusual, part of her address, the Trump-related part, although she never mentioned Trump by name.
Spanberger does not seem to be looking for a fight with Trump but she certainly seemed to signal she’s not afraid of one. There may be sufficient opportunities.
Trump has tried to shut down Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach; a federal judge on Friday granted a preliminary injunction to allow the work to resume but that’s unlikely to be the end of the matter. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.) For a governor who used her inaugural address to restate her campaign pledge to produce more energy, getting that energy project up and running will need to be a priority — otherwise ratepayers will be stuck paying for wind turbines that aren’t producing a single kilowatt, which definitely won’t meet her goal of lowering energy prices.
On Friday, the Trump administration sued Virginia for access to its voter rolls, which the administration says is necessary to identify any fraud but which some states have said would force them to disclose personal information such as Social Security numbers. The Trump administration is also engaged in negotiations with George Mason University over a federal investigation into various practices at the school. And then, of course, there’s immigration.
Spanberger’s remarks come in the shadow of the tumult in Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed an unarmed woman and the Department of Justice is now investigating both the Minnesota governor and the Minneapolis mayor. Richmond has been awash in rumors that the Trump administration will target Virginia for increased enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement once a Democratic governor takes office. On Friday, the vice chair of the Henrico County Board of Supervisors warned of “increased ICE activity” in her county. Spanberger followed talk with action. As promised, as one of her first executive orders, she rescinded one of now-former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s orders: State and local law enforcement is no longer required to enforce federal immigration laws.
Spanberger’s Trump-related comments could cut several ways. They could trigger a president who is prone to being triggered by criticism. They could also serve as a warning.
Spanberger, whose background is in law enforcement, including service as a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, does not seem to lack for a spine. Whatever you think of her policies, she does not seem like a governor to be trifled with. Even before she took office, she had done something unprecedented: She’d sent word that she wanted five members of the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors to resign so she could appoint a majority — and three immediately did. That board has been involved in controversy since last summer, when the Trump administration helped force out the school’s president. Spanberger’s call for some board members to resign wasn’t a surprise, given that she’d said the board shouldn’t hire a new president until she’d taken office (it did anyway), but it does stand out in history. Two previous governors faced controversies involving state universities: Gerald Baliles with Virginia Tech in 1987 and Bob McDonnell with the University of Virginia in 2012. Baliles invited board members to resign if they weren’t prepared to value academics over athletics, McDonnell threatened to demand resignations if board members didn’t resolve a botched presidential firing, but neither actually got to the point of insisting on resignations. Spanberger did — before she even took office.
A few hours after being sworn in, Spanberger signed 10 executive orders. New governors typically do that, but hers were more substantive than recent ones we’ve seen. Besides the order related to immigration enforcement, she set up a state task force to “coordinate a statewide response to federal workforce reductions, funding cuts, tariffs, and immigration impacts” and set in motion reviews of regulations that deter housing construction and how university board members are appointed. (For more on the executive orders, see Elizabeth Beyer’s story on the subject.)
I wrote last week that Spanberger — who has never served in state government — has surrounded herself with Cabinet members who have long experience in Richmond, which would enable her to move quickly. Nothing I’ve seen or heard so far challenges that observation. On the contrary, her moves regarding the University of Virginia, the tone of her inaugural address and the substance of her executive orders only underscore it. I suspect the political forecast (and the pace of change) may be the same as the weather forecast: Expect things in Richmond to be brisk.
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