Thoughts from Mister Roger’s neighborhood: quick hits by your intrepid Virginia Mercury columnist, Roger Chesley.
When it comes to voting, hypocrisy and deceitfulness are key tools utilized by President Donald Trump. That’s why Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones has joined nearly two dozen other states and Washington, D.C., in challenging Trump’s dubiously legal executive order to curb mail-in voting. Trump’s proclamation also directs federal agencies to compile a list of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state and share it with state election officials.
The paranoid president, who has railed about elections when he’s lost the popular vote (two out of his three contests), already knows states administer voting under the U.S. Constitution; there’s that pesky document again.
Trump also has voted by mail himself, as recently as late March in a special election in Florida. That brings to mind the adage: Rules for thee, but not for me.
Plus, The New York Times just debunked – as numerous sources have previously – many of the Republican Party and Trumpian claims about mail-in ballots and voter fraud. The Brookings Institution reported last year that voting fraud by mail accounts for about four cases out of every 10 million mailed-in votes. If only Trump lied at such a low rate.
“This is a blatant attempt by Donald Trump to sow confusion and distrust in our democratic processes and to influence the midterm elections for his own personal gain,” Jones said in a statement. He’s correct in fighting the discredited executive order.
We also now know a key financial donor behind the misleading, offensive mailers that oppose the April 21 state redistricting referendum. It’s none other than Peter Thiel, a major financial supporter of Trump.
Per Aspera Policy Incorporated, a dark-money organization backed by the tech billionaire, has donated at least $2.5 million to the Justice for Democracy PAC. The political action committee has littered my mailbox with about a half-dozen mailers in the past few weeks.
Yet the group trotted out a Black, former state delegate as the face of the campaign that distorts civil rights struggles and imagery. Mailers also suggested Gov. Abigail Spanberger and former President Barack Obama oppose this referendum; those are lies.
I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face: These machinations started because Trump tried to tilt the playing field by urging Republican-led states to undertake mid-decade redistricting, so the U.S. House of Representatives would stay in GOP control following the elections in November. Virginia Democrats are fighting back against the craven effort.
Is it mean of me to suggest pulverizing the giant presidential busts, now wasting away on a large swath of land in James City County? They’re like a stateless people seeking a permanent home, cursed to be nomads forever.
They’re back in the news because the entities that own the property where the 42 heads now sit want to transform the land into housing, office buildings and other facilities. The heads would be featured on part of the redeveloped site.
Sculptor David Adickes created them, but they’ve found little traction in Virginia. A few were formerly at the Norfolk Botanical Garden a couple of decades ago. Then they all landed at Presidents Park near Busch Gardens from 2004 to 2010; that was the year the educational park closed.
I’ve written previously about their garish, freakish, unflattering visages. The busts – each up to 18 feet tall and weighing an average of 7,500 pounds – need constant repairs, too.
They deserve a proper burial. Maybe by sledgehammer.
Here’s another sign of trouble for an informed citizenry: News deserts in Virginia more than doubled between 2023 and 2025, Axios reported this week. It cited Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism State of Local News project. As of 2025, 16 Virginia counties didn’t have a local news source.
Though online outlets like The Virginia Mercury, Cardinal News and others have launched in recent years, we often can’t focus on local issues. We have fewer staffers than many daily newspapers.
And even when newspapers continue to publish, they may be shells of their former selves – as my onetime employer, The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot (since merged with the Daily Press in Newport News) is today. That means less coverage of city councils, school boards, the environment and other nuts-and-bolts issues right where you live. It means fewer eyes on the people in power, too.
A major part of the problem is that the longtime funding model, heavily reliant on advertising, doesn’t work anymore. It’s dispiriting. If I had a solution, I’d gladly offer it. In the meantime, you can do your part to support local journalism via readership and donations.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger didn’t fare well in a new poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University, with approval ratings at 47% and disapproval at 46%. “The approval mark for Spanberger is 13 percentage points lower than the average for Virginia governors in Post polling since the 1990s,” the newspaper reported.
It also said the Democrat’s ratings reflect sharp polarization among Virginia voters in their views of the state’s first female governor, who ran as a centrist and was a former congresswoman in a red-leaning district. Some of her affordability agenda has fared well with voters, but other issues – including supporting the redistricting referendum – have revealed a more partisan stance.
Spanberger should be concerned, though I’m surprised by the early blowback. She hasn’t even been in office for 100 days yet. That used to be a benchmark for analyzing leaders.
Lastly, an early Christmas has come to hundreds of families living in public housing in Alexandria. A historic Black church there, Alfred Street Baptist, has donated more than $1 million to pay off outstanding balances of more than 300 families.
The church raised the money during a campaign in which congregants donated money to fight homelessness and support housing. As part of this project, families will also be asked how they got behind on rent, and figure out steps to prevent that from recurring. Kudos to the church and other officials for seeking such a holistic approach.