• Last Tuesday we predicted how Rob Wittman will try to attack Shannon Taylor, and gave you the tools to counter these attacks.

• On Thursday we suggested five ways you can lower your cost of living. (Spoiler: all of them involve voting Wittman out!)

Today we welcome you to the first Thursday Throwdown, an occasional series that debunks whatever nonsense Rob Wittman has been spinning. He runs around like a rodeo clown, but he never jumps into action to represent and protect the regular people of VA-01 – and we can prove it.

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For today’s Throwdown, we have a lot of options. Over the last two weeks, Rob has sent at least 11 emails:

• Four about health care

• Three on the Chesapeake Bay

• Two puff pieces about his public service history (why?!)

• Two about 529 savings plans

He’s also posted several photo ops on social media, and said he was “horrified and heartbroken” about the shooting at VSU (after voting against every gun regulation bill since 2019 and celebrating a 19th anniversary of receiving money from the NRA).

But it’s what he didn’t talk about at all that shows who he truly is.

• The 2,500 square miles of Virginia coastal seafloor that a Florida treasure-hunting company wants to vacuum up, based on policies whose development Wittman has led.

• The 5,000 American sailors who have spent more than 260 days at sea aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, fighting a war Congress never authorized, in conditions their own families describe as unlivable.

Are these omissions an oversight? Nope. Rob Wittman uses strategic silences to hide the true impact of his work on the constituents whom he represents. Well, we think that stinks. Wittman may be a clown, but he’s a dangerous clown.

It’s throwdown time!

Dredge, baby, dredge

Here’s the headline: Wittman consistently joins small, bipartisan, uncontroversial conservation items, and is consistently absent from the fights that will determine the health and future of the Chesapeake Bay.

In his newsletters, he has mentioned four measures where he demonstrated leadership:

1. Mitigation Action and Watermen Support (MAWS) Act (H.R. 4294):
   This helps watermen fight invasive blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
   Wittman is a co-sponsor; it was written by Rep. Sarah Elfreth, the Democrat from Maryland’s 3rd District, although he occasionally refers to it as “my” bill.
   
   Status: Not yet law. Passed the House; stuck in Senate committee for five months so far.
   

2. America’s Conservation Enhancement (ACE) Act of 2020 (P.L. 116-188):
   This raised the authorization ceiling (note those words!) for the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program from a lapsed $40 million (expired 2005) to $90 million in FY21, stepping to $92 million by FY25.
   He helped pass the original ACE Act as a House cosponsor in 2020, and led the House reauthorization that became law at the end of 2024.
   
   Status: Authorizations are permission slips, not money. ACE funds partnerships, monitoring, modeling, and some grants. The actual pollution-reduction dollars are elsewhere, and Trump’s FY26 budget proposed cutting those funds by $3.46 billion. The FY27 request trimmed the Bay Program itself from $93 million to $91 million while cutting EPA overall by 52%. What has Wittman done about this? Nothing.
   

3. Advancing Water Research and Collaboration (AWRC) Act (H.R. 7889):
   Wittman is the lead sponsor of this bill to “amend the Water Resources Research Act of 1984 to reauthorize the water resources research and technology institutes program.” It’s a research-coordination bill roughly thirteen months from any possible effect on water quality. In real terms: it appropriates no money, but simply reauthorizes coordination on research activities. See how this sounds important but delivers nothing tangible? That’s Wittman’s whole shtick in a nutshell.
   
   Status: Hasn’t passed the House. All Wittman’s done is introduce this bill. Nothing has happened with it.
   

4. $400,000 in the FY27 Commerce-Justice-Science bill for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS).
   
   Status: Not actually appropriated. His own release states the measure “has been approved by the House Appropriations Committee and awaits passage on the House Floor.” In the context of our $1.3 billion seafood economy and a 40-year restoration failure, $400,000 is a rounding error – but he announced it as an accomplishment, and it hasn’t even happened yet.

Let’s summarize simply: with these measures, Wittman has achieved nothing of substance on the Bay or for our watermen. They are all pinky-promise achievements, optimistic hopes that something will emerge from them. Folks, he’s had 19 years to do something — ANYTHING! — and this is all he has. This is performative politics, and it has real, negative impacts on our district.

Where is Wittman in the fight to restore the Bay’s health, and to protect it from further harm? Here’s where: his own signature achievements threaten the Bay, and he’s trying to hide it by speaking only about these tepid measures, most of which have not even become law!

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We won’t let Wittman hide how his own policies threaten the Bay

Wittman is Vice Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. He said he would use this position to advocate for a cleaner, safer, healthier Chesapeake Bay. He also sits on the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, which on January 22 held an oversight called “Deep Dive: Examining the Regulatory and Statutory Barriers to Deep Sea Mining.” Note that word: “barriers”.

Wittman has spent three years building an argument to open up American waters to seabed mining. In December 2023, he and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) led 31 Republicans in a letter urging the Pentagon to allow seabed mining as a new way to compete with China. He co-chairs the Critical Minerals Policy Working Group, where his stated priority — dating back to at least 2024 — is overhauling environmental permitting to expand domestic mining.

Wittman wants the Pentagon to use the Defense Production Act to strategically stockpile key minerals as a counter to Chinese export controls on gallium, germanium and graphite. His bipartisan SECURE Minerals Act (H. R. 7126), which he crows about frequently, would create a wholly government-owned corporation with a $2.5 billion authorization to stabilize prices and stockpile minerals, on the explicit theory that Chinese pricing makes domestic projects impossible.

Read that last part again: the bill exists to make mineral projects viable that the market would not otherwise support. This brings us to a company called Odyssey Marine Exploration.

The Florida-based Odyssey wants a minimum 20-year lease on roughly 2,500 square miles of seafloor (an area larger than the state of Delaware) just north of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. They use trailing suction hopper dredging: a vessel drags a vacuum across the bottom, digging down close to ten feet. The Army Corps uses the same technology to clear navigation channels, but never at anything approaching this scale. No one has done shallow seabed mining commercially in the United States. No one has done it successfully anywhere; similar projects in Namibia, Mexico, and New Zealand have been paused, stalled, or rejected outright.

What’s more, nobody has studied what minerals actually exist on the seabed floor. Virginia Energy’s own geologist has said the mineral “hot spots” come from surveys done in the 1980s and ‘90s, and that those surveys may contain anomalies, and would require follow-up. Odyssey told federal regulators they’re confident they can develop the resource, but then they redacted the numbers (which does not suggest confidence in those numbers!). In its 2025 annual report, the company told the SEC that its losses raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. (Worth noting: Odyssey spent years in federal court trying to claim a Spanish shipwreck’s treasure, lost the case, and was ordered to hand it back.)

So what’s at risk? Virginia’s seafood industry generated $1.3 billion and supported about 7,200 jobs in 2023. Menhaden, the keystone forage fish that feeds striped bass and osprey, migrate straight through that water into the Bay. So do North Atlantic right whales, loggerhead sea turtles, and Atlantic sturgeon. Accomack County, Northampton County, the city of Virginia Beach, and Ocean City, Maryland have all filed concerns about Odyssey’s proposal. So has the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, whose commissioner told federal regulators he has critical concerns about the impact on fisheries and the businesses that depend on them.

Now, two notable facts:

1. Wittman has advocated primarily for deep-sea nodule mining, as this 2023 letter to DOD shows. This would be for deposits “hundreds to thousands of miles from shore” at depths of 200 meters or more, regulated by the International Seabed Authority. By contrast, Odyssey’s Virginia proposal is for industrial dredging in 15 to 330 feet of water, a few dozen miles offshore, regulated domestically by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), part of the Department of the Interior. Odyssey’s proposed operation is different to that described in Wittman’s letter. However, they each share the same justification – which Wittman has championed.

2. As far as we can tell, Odyssey is not a donor to Rob Wittman. We searched the public record for Odyssey, The Metals Company, Impossible Metals, and every related term we could think of, and found nothing. So any suggestion that Wittman has been “paid off” is not substantiated.

Wittman didn’t get bought. He built the argument, and now he seems prepared to sacrifice the coast of the Commonwealth he has spent 19 years telling us he loves — for reasons he will neither explain nor justify.

What’s the response from the man who chairs two committees with jurisdiction over this issue? Nothing. No statement on the Odyssey proposal. No statement on the June 22 BOEM notice about Odyssey’s proposal. No comment in any of his newsletters about the Bay.

Now, Wittman could say that Odyssey’s proposal is adjacent to Jen Kiggans’ district (VA-02), not VA-01. But she’s said nothing about it either! In fact, while all of Virginia’s Democratic representatives and senators demanded that BOEM extend the comment deadline on Odyssey’s proposal, Virginia’s entire Republican Congressional delegation has been 100% absent.

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The fact is that if the seabed adjacent to the Bay is dredged, the impacts will be felt by the entire Bay and all of its communities, including the parts in VA-01. And Rob Wittman knows that.

All of this is part of a repeating pattern. When Wittman sends us messages about the (minimal, mostly unfinished) measures he’s involved with on the Bay, he’s talking about non-controversial work where broad consensus already exists. But when questions about seabed mining come up, he has to choose between his conservation “brand” and his defense-oriented, critical-minerals agenda – and he wimps out. Despite the comment period on the mining closing on August 22nd, for weeks he’s sent us emails about other things.

What can YOU do? Before the federal comment window closes this Friday, go here to submit your comments on this proposal. Because Rob Wittman will stay silent while his own policies threaten the Chesapeake Bay and all of us who rely upon it.

He oversees only his own complicity

On November 21, 2025, the USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego. It has made only one port stop since, a single day at Guam in December. It has now been at sea longer without a port call than any American carrier in living memory, supporting a war against Iran that began February 28 and that Congress has never authorized. (Wittman voted against ending unauthorized hostilities with Iran every time it came up.)

The reason for the history-making length of deployment traces back to the war’s first hours. On February 28, the day hostilities began, Iran struck the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, badly damaging the region’s main logistics hub. Military supply lines are, of course, absolutely essential to the success of campaigns. The Navy was forced to reroute supplies through the British-operated island of Diego Garcia, located 2,200 miles away in the Maldives. That is not a reliable supply line; it’s fragile, distant, and lower capacity than Bahrain. According to reports, the destruction of the U.S.’s Bahrain facility led directly to the strain on the Lincoln and to its historic tenure at sea.

Critics have accused Hegseth of actively concealing the extent of the damage in Bahrain. The Pentagon has separately been caught downplaying casualties elsewhere in the war, including quietly removing four confirmed deaths from its official casualty count in August. In any case, as Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), it’s Wittman’s job to hold the Pentagon to account, and especially Hegseth himself. The damage in Bahrain was on the first day of the conflict – 173 days ago – and the impact on supply lines and America’s global defense preparedness was obvious from the start. Why has Wittman failed to ask Hegseth a single question about this critical issue in 173 days?!

The consequences for our service members have been physically and mentally horrific. On August 3, a sailor went overboard. He was recovered within the hour by a search-and-rescue helicopter and transferred off the ship for care. The Navy has described it as a mental health episode. Family members, speaking to Military Times and to Navy leadership at town halls this month, say multiple sailors have jumped overboard to escape conditions on the ship. They have described moldy showers, broken toilets, weeks without hot water, food shortages, and a ship’s doctor warning that the crew needed port soon. Acting Navy Secretary Cao (a close friend and campaign buddy of Rob Wittman’s) disputes parts of that account, and Hegseth claimed the reports “misrepresented” the facts – but failed to provide any proof. Asked on August 14 whether the deployment had run too long, the President said it was not nearly long enough.

The Pentagon has now taken action, and is moving the USS George Washington from the Pacific to replace the Lincoln in the Middle East. Even Hegseth’s former employer, Fox News, understands the downstream impacts of this move:

Since the destruction of the Bahrain facility, this dilemma was 100% predictable, and now it’s urgent. U.S. forces are being stretched thin worldwide, creating weaknesses and vulnerabilities that our adversaries can exploit. This is what America now faces because of Trump, Hegseth, Cao, and Wittman’s multiple and cascading strategic follies.

In his role on the HASC, Rob Wittman chairs the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. He sits on Seapower and Projection Forces, which he used to chair. He co-chairs the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus. He is, by any measure, one of the most powerful people in Congress on exactly this concern.

He has said nothing about the plight of the service members on the USS Lincoln, or the consequences for America’s global defense and strategic priorities.

This is not the first time Wittman has defaulted to silence when Navy service members have suffered at the hands of Trump, Hegseth, and Cao. The USS Gerald R. Ford came home to Norfolk on May 16 after 326 days, the longest carrier deployment since Vietnam. In March, a fire in its laundry burned for more than a day; over 200 sailors were treated for smoke inhalation and roughly 600 lost their bunks. There were sewage failures and inoperable laundry – on a $13 billion ship.

Wittman could have raised questions. He did not — but someone else did. On March 19, Senator Tim Kaine wrote to the Secretary of the Navy demanding answers on maintenance, morale, and retention, and noting that sailors “and their families in Virginia are being pushed to a breaking point.” Kaine is the ranking member of a Senate seapower subcommittee. Wittman is the vice chairman of the House committee that writes the defense bill. He’s a friend of Acting Secretary Cao, for crying out loud! So why did he do nothing?

Oh, but he did do something, and it’s right on brand: rather than meet with sailors from the USS Ford or their families, Rob Wittman met with his defense contractor donors.

On June 3, the House passed a war powers resolution directing the President to end hostilities with Iran. Four Republicans crossed over: Massie, Fitzpatrick, Barrett, Davidson. Wittman voted Nay.

So: Wittman voted to keep the deployment running, and his committee owns the oversight of what it costs the crew. When the bill came due in the form of deteriorating conditions, exhaustion, at least one man in the water, and weakening America’s defense in the Pacific, the man who calls himself an advocate for our men and women in uniform and committed to America’s global defense sent us 11 emails without a single damn word about any of it.

What you can do now

Before Friday, August 22, file a public comment with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on the Virginia mineral leasing proposal. Regular people already have. It takes five minutes and it goes in the record.

Call Wittman’s offices. Yorktown, (757) 527-6270. Glen Allen, (804) 401-4120. Washington, (202) 225-4261. Ask two questions, politely, and write down what they say:

1. Does the congressman support Odyssey’s lease off Virginia’s coast, yes or no?

2. As Vice Chairman of Armed Services, what has he asked the Navy about conditions aboard the Lincoln and the Ford?

He owes us all answers on both these issues. He has jurisdiction over both, and for two straight weeks – with 11 chances to bring either one up – he has chosen silence. Is that the representation you want in Congress?

Nope, neither do we. Support Shannon Taylor’s campaign however you can! We can’t afford Rob Wittman.

There’s more to Rob Wittman than you think

Rob Wittman’s disinformation campaigns are detailed and numerous. Arm yourself against them using our archive. Here’s where you can get more insight on some of the topics in today’s newsletter.

Chesapeake Bay & the Environment

Healthcare

Representing VA-01

Jobs

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To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

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Wittman will likely attack Taylor to discredit her in every way he and his campaign staff can imagine. Since the 1990s, Republicans have used a combative approach to politics, using methods pioneered by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. This includes hateful language, hyper-partisanship, questioning Democrats’ patriotism, and accusing Democrats of wanting to destroy America.

Wittman, who has represented VA-01 since 2007, will probably follow in Gingrich’s footsteps if he thinks it will help him win. Angles of attack may include “soft on crime;” communist/socialist; takes corporate PAC money; and the transgender wedge issue. We can’t predict exactly what forms his attacks will take, but we’re here to let you know what to watch for.

“Soft on crime”

Republicans frequently claim — without evidence — that Democratic candidates are “soft on crime.” They call them things like “enablers of lawlessness” and “dangerously liberal.” They engage in fearmongering about Democrats defunding the police, even though very few Democrats endorse that idea.

Let’s be clear: Republicans use distortions and lies to misrepresent the fact that Democrats do take crime seriously and work hard to make our communities safer. Here are some examples from congressional districts near VA-01:

• Rep. Jennifer McClellan (VA-04) co-sponsored the Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act of 2025 (H. R. 2799) and the GHOST Act of 2025 (H. R. 3373), both of which became law.

• Representative Eugene Vindman (VA-07) has worked on public safety, border enforcement, and anti-crime legislation including the Targeting Online Sales of Fentanyl Act (H. R. 5744), which became law. He also secured $2.7 million in federal appropriations for local law enforcement and public safety modernization projects.

• Rep. Bobby Scott (VA-03) focuses on criminal justice reform such as the SAFE Justice Act (H. R. 4261) and the Youth Promise Act (H. R. 2721).

Democrats tend not to whip out bullhorns to blast their anti-crime efforts — but maybe they should. Polls have found that Americans worry about the connection between gun violence and crime, and that focusing on gun safety issues helps Democratic candidates.

Meanwhile, Republicans insist on extreme policies that flood our communities with guns — making us less safe. They also use racially-coded language and stereotypes to exploit racist fears and to appeal to white voters. In the absence of policy discussions, this approach tells us they’re less concerned about reducing crime, and more invested in drumming up votes based on fear instead of facts.

Republicans like Rob Wittman keep weakening gun laws. He voted against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Protecting Our Kids Act, and other gun control bills that had strong public support. He supported an amicus brief challenging New York’s attempt to restrict who could carry concealed firearms.

Here’s how else we know Wittman is only giving lip service to the crime issue: he is either unaware or unconcerned about factors that are known to contribute to crime rates in communities. Lead in the environment plays a documented and significant role in driving crime, but Wittman introduced a bill to increase our exposure to lead. Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act (H. R. 556) blocks federal bans on lead in gear and has become law. Poverty drives crime rates up, but Wittman voted for H. R. 1, resulting in devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, resources relied upon by millions of families to make ends meet. In fact, Wittman has a shocking track record of voting against the very things that reduce crime — background checks, violence-intervention grants, victim services, Medicaid-funded treatment — and then campaigns on the fear those programs were quietly putting to rest.

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And what about Shannon Taylor? Let’s examine the facts. Accusers on social media have been spinning a false narrative that she’s soft on crime, with specific attention to the plea deal she negotiated with the Henrico Doctors’ Hospital nurse who was charged with abusing nine infants in the NICU in 2025.

This timeline of events and the Special Grand Jury Report found that the hospital failed to prevent abuse of those babies. Some people are angry that the sentence wasn’t longer. While that’s a very reasonable opinion, it’s not about Shannon Taylor’s work — it’s about the sentencing guidelines by which Taylor is legally constrained.

It’s important to understand the realities surrounding this upsetting case:

• Taylor pushed to identify the nurse (Erin Strotman) at fault, despite the hospital’s flawed record-keeping and insufficient monitoring.

• Strotman received the “maximum possible sentence allowed under a plea agreement.”

• Taylor’s court conviction meant Strotman had to surrender her nursing license and was barred from working as a nurse.

• Taylor urged affected families to contact her office and kept all the families involved in the case.

• Five of the affected families shared their impact statements.

• Families of the injured babies expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

The misinformation and disinformation around this emotionally-charged case illustrates the importance of seeking out the facts, instead of blindly accepting false narratives.

If and when Wittman accuses Taylor of being soft on crime, ask yourself if he knows more about the law than she, a seasoned lawyer with 14 years of experience as Henrico County’s top prosecutor. Ask if he’s aware that in 2025, Henrico County witnessed a historic drop in crime, including an 86% (!) drop in homicides.

There’s another aspect to this nonsense soft-on-crime narrative: Wittman votes 100% of the time with President Trump, a CONVICTED FELON. That’s outrageous.

“Socialist”/“Communist”

Socialism — which, in simple terms, favors social ownership of the means of production rather than private ownership — has been leveled as an accusation for a very long time. It threatens old hierarchies of race and class, and that’s why it’s been a frequent cry by political conservatives (who are invested in maintaining those very hierarchies) since it emerged in the late 18th century in the wake of the French Revolution. In U.S. politics, accusations of socialism date back to the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan in 1896. It became widespread with the election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932.

Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Republicans are gearing up their political attacks and getting ready to yell “Socialist!” at anything they don’t like. Whether they call Democrats “politically correct,” “woke,” “pro-CRT,” “communists,” “godless communists,” “barbarians,” “Marxists,” “radical candidates,” “extreme liberals,” or “socialists,” it’s the same tired tune. Such labels are attempts to paint Democrats as extremists bent on destroying America’s free enterprise system — regardless of where specific Democrats actually fall on the ideological spectrum.

Don’t fall for attempts to malign social safety nets and other public benefits. Many are EARNED benefits, funded by you out of every paycheck of your working life. These services help people maintain stability, or in some cases, just survive. By voting for H. R. 1, Wittman caused devastating cuts to Medicaid; burdensome Medicaid work requirements that put ill and disabled people at risk of losing coverage; and cuts to food assistance for Virginia SNAP recipients. Tens of millions of seniors and disabled beneficiaries will lose Medicare Part D by this year’s end. That means higher premiums and more expensive prescription medication. Wittman even made a fake phone call to avoid questions after Speaker Mike Johnson floated the (wildly unpopular) idea of cuts to Social Security.

The true threat to Social Security is the massive upward transfer of wealth to the rich. Wittman prioritized “sweeping cuts to Medicaid and SNAP to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans” and tax breaks for himself over American families.

If Wittman labels Taylor a “socialist,” a “communist,” or — thanks to Fox News — a “DEI queen,” now you understand the historical context of those accusations. You also know it’s an attempt to divert our attention away from Wittman’s votes for disasters like Trump’s illegal Iran War and the cost-of-living increases burdening VA-01. Taylor’s “Serve the People First” agenda is a direct threat to Wittman’s self-dealing and his unwavering loyalty to the most corrupt administration that has ever existed. He’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes regarding his unabashed support of Trump’s cronyism, corruption, and extremist ways.

Attacks on Taylor are rooted in desperation because when it comes to pocketbook issues, he has nothing of value to offer us. He works for billionaires and corporate donors instead of working families.

Corporate PAC money

It’s true that when Shannon Taylor ran for Attorney General in 2025, she accepted corporate PAC funds from Dominion Energy. Some voters were troubled by this because they worry about the influence of corporate money in politics; they want their representatives to work for the people of their districts, not for other interests. Taylor listened and learned, and she has refused corporate PAC money for her congressional campaign:

“Shannon has pledged to never take a dime of corporate PAC money in this campaign or while representing us in Congress, so there is no doubt who she fights for.”

Yes, that represents a change from Taylor’s Attorney General campaign. And isn’t that exactly what we want from our representatives — to HEAR us, to take on new information, and to adjust their actions accordingly?

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We can’t emphasize enough that the real threat to VA-01 is Rob Wittman, the MAGA extremist who votes with Trump 100% of the time. He hasn’t listened or learned from ANYTHING we’ve been trying to tell him; instead he goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid listening, like refusing to hold an in-person town hall since 2019.

Any attack on Taylor for accepting corporate PAC money would demand a look at Wittman’s own record on that front. As the saying goes, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. And Wittman serves big donors, not you. Between 2023 and 2024, he vacuumed up $982,346 in PAC donations. The Netanyahu-supporting American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was his second-largest contributor organization. It’s not a coincidence that Wittman has supported military aid packages and NDAA provisions funding joint U.S.-Israeli military AI development.

On other fronts, defense companies and single-issue lobbyists have been buying Wittman’s loyalty. 21% of his donations came from defense or defense aerospace companies, while he holds the position of Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).

Wittman held a fundraiser with lobbyists at a swanky steak house while a government shutdown loomed. He enriched himself with Big Energy stocks. He’s made millions while his constituents get poorer, inflation rises, the job market breaks down, and Virginia’s economy weakens. He profits from data centers. His net worth in 2025 was approximately $5.6 million (and undoubtedly much more now!), placing him in the richest 5% of Virginians who receive nearly half of the state’s tax cuts.

Wittman’s money comes overwhelmingly from large donors, organizations, and companies he oversees as a legislator; hardly any comes from small donors, the regular folks of VA-01. No wonder he doesn’t feel accountable to us, the very people he’s supposed to serve. If he accuses Taylor of accepting corporate PAC money, recognize it for the rank hypocrisy it is — and then ignore it. We can’t afford for Rob Wittman to throw us under the corporate PAC bus any longer.

Republicans’ #1 wedge issue: transgender people

During Virginia’s 2025 gubernatorial race, Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears tried with all her might to attack Abigail Spanberger “for her stance on transgender rights in Virginia schools.” The attacks failed. Earle-Sears did her best to vilify trans people, even though a CNN poll revealed transgender policies ranked last among the issues surveyed.

Instead of focusing on issues like affordability, healthcare, and jobs, Republicans are trying to create a trans panic. They’ve been targeting trans student athletes, gender-affirming care, and bathroom policies in Virginia and beyond. There are eight anti-trans bills in the Virginia General Assembly alone. This deluge of legislation aims to criminalize trans people and restrict their rights.

Only about 0.08% of the U.S. population aged 13+ identify as transgender, so these attacks are wildly disproportionate to the number of trans people in the country. The Utah legislature banned trans athletes even though the law would only impact one trans girl athlete in K-12 sports. As of this writing, ZERO trans athletes are “competing in the top-tier of any major professional sport in the United States.”

Preparation is key. Spanberger anticipated the attacks from Earle-Sears and responded by establishing herself “as a fighter who would protect all of Virginia’s children.” Her campaign response ads “addressed her opponent’s claims without throwing transgender Americans under the bus.”

Wittman is a willing foot soldier in the anti-trans hysteria. He voted for Marjorie Taylor Green’s anti-trans bill, Protect Children’s Innocence Act (H. R. 3492), which became law. In 2016, he voted against the Maloney Amendment, which would have barred federal contractors from discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Transgender folks aren’t the problem or the perpetrators; they’re the victims. Hate crimes and violence against them have increased over time, with trans women “nearly four times as likely to be victims of violent crime” than cisgender women. Republicans claim they target trans rights to protect cisgender women and girls, but the truth is they’re using trans rights as a wedge issue. An actual, imminent threat to women is the cisgender men who are reportedly infiltrating women’s restrooms in Target to challenge the store’s transgender policy. Trans people are not a real threat. They’re the canary in the coal mine, and laws targeting them are attempts to normalize denial of rights.

If Wittman deploys the same anti-trans schemes as Winsome Earle-Sears, remember that he isn’t trying to protect women. How do we know that? He voted NO on the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013.

The more you know

Wittman’s potential attacks against Taylor will almost certainly include exaggerated claims, disinformation, racially coded language, and wedge issues. His campaign may try to divide us by stoking fears about immigrants and other minority groups for the chaos he helped unleash along with Trump.

Wittman might also accuse Taylor of corruption and conflicts of interest of which he himself is guilty, or that he willingly enables in the Trump administration. Our job as voters is to know the facts, ask questions, and check reliable sources so we can avoid falling for his propaganda. Share this article right now with your fellow voters to help them stay vigilant.

And then vote for Shannon Taylor on November 3. Because we can’t afford Rob Wittman.

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

• Last Tuesday we urged you to vote (well done! 👏) and talked about why we need to unite to beat Wittman.

• On Thursday we profiled Shannon Taylor, and showed how her approach is different from Wittman’s. (⭐️ Spoiler: she’s done actual, productive work and benefited the people she’s served!)

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Congressman Rob Wittman is the architect of the grim scene that’s been building across Virginia’s First District: shockingly expensive groceries, higher gas prices, spiking utility bills, higher healthcare costs, and tariff-driven price increases across the board. Since President Trump’s second term began, Wittman has been a willing ally of Trump’s cost-raising agenda. His votes to raise our cost of living have resulted in an average cost increase of $2,238 per household, even as he grew his personal wealth through energy stocks and tax breaks on his triple-decker beach house.

Trump’s agenda is squeezing VA-01 constituents every day. The higher cost of living disproportionately impacts low-income families, whose limited income leaves “little room to absorb additional expenses.” Many Americans can’t afford basic necessities like toilet paper. Some have resorted to selling their blood plasma to make ends meet.

The good news? A solution to make everyday essentials more affordable is within easy reach. Here are 5 ways you can lower your cost of living.

Problem: Groceries are too expensive and harder to get
Solution: Vote Rob Wittman out of office

Summer isn’t over yet, but you might want to think twice about throwing those juicy hamburgers on the grill because beef costs 14.8% more than it did a year ago.” Coffee? Up nearly $10 per pound. In Trump’s first year of his second term, Americans paid $310 more for groceries than in 2024. In April 2026, grocery prices jumped 0.7% in a single month — the largest monthly increase since August 2022. Rising food costs have forced nearly half of Virginians into debt.

Why are you paying higher grocery prices? One reason is the labor shortage. Wittman could have helped stabilize farm labor by co-sponsoring the bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act, but he chose not to. The consequence of increased ICE raids and H. R. 1, which included a massive tax on legal immigration, is the shrinkage of the farm labor force and the subsequent spike in food prices. Who pays for that? You already know: you do. The average family will pay roughly $2,150 more per year for food, housing, and services by 2028. Another factor is the Trump tariffs, which inflated the costs of imported food products for consumers.

Increased diesel prices from the Iran conflict and the repeated closures of the Strait of Hormuz have had a ripple effect on all household expenses. Food distributors have to pay higher fuel prices, too, and they pass the cost onto customers. Food banks are also feeling the squeeze from higher fuel costs.

And with his vote for H. R. 1, Wittman cut federal SNAP funding by $186 billion through 2034 and shifted the cost of SNAP to the states. H. R. 1 made the deepest cuts to SNAP food assistance in history. Children, seniors, disabled people, and people with low-paying jobs are now at risk of hunger or starvation. Since July 2025, SNAP participation dropped by more than 4 million people. About 2.4 million people will lose SNAP in a typical month. The 14% drop in SNAP benefits have forced low-income and disabled residents in Virginia to “choose between food, shelter, and healthcare.” In rural counties in VA-01 where a third of grocery sales run through SNAP, the cuts threaten the stores themselves. Overall, because of cuts to SNAP, grocery prices go up and access to groceries becomes more limited. And Wittman is to blame for all of it.

In one of the richest nations in the world, we shouldn’t have to worry about our children going hungry. That’s why it’s crucial that we elect Shannon Taylor, the VA-01 candidate whose plan is to “Serve the People First.” Unlike Wittman, she understands that food isn’t optional for Virginians. Voting for Taylor will help lower your cost of living because she’ll work to put food on your table, restore SNAP funding, support legislation like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, and help put a stop to Trump’s illegal tariffs.

Problem: Higher gas prices
Solution: Vote Rob Wittman out of office

Trump’s reckless invasion of Iran resulted in soaring gas prices; collectively, Americans have spent a walloping extra $78 billion for gas and diesel since the conflict started in February. Virginia families have seen their gas costs increase by $605 since then. As of August 5, gas prices in Virginia were averaging about $4 per gallon. It’s getting so bad that Chesapeake community advocates distributed food, gas cards, and household essentials to struggling residents.

Wittman is making this situation worse. Not only did he fail to object to the Iran War, but he also voted against the Iran War Powers Resolution. Then he voted for H.Con Res. 113, which meant an additional $95 billion in new defense spending, including for Trump’s unauthorized war with Iran. More funding will prolong the conflict — and that means there’s no relief in sight for your high gas bill.

What does Wittman gain from your higher gas prices? $68,000 of his PAC donations came from oil and gas, mining, chemical and manufacturing, and electric utilities. He eagerly courts big donors so he can stay in office and, in a vicious cycle, continues to vote for legislation that increases gas prices and explodes gas company profits (which even Trump is embarrassed about!). In a strike against your gas bill and the environment, Wittman voted against electric vehicle tax credits. He’s profiting from spiking gas prices and hoping his constituents don’t notice that he’s pickpocketing them.

We shouldn’t have to struggle with empty gas tanks and limited travel because of the president’s reckless whims and Wittman’s greed, while tax cuts are gifted to billionaires with private planes. Shannon Taylor can work to reassert Congressional war powers and vote to end Trump’s illegal Iran War. She’s far more likely than Wittman to hold Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other administration officials accountable for illegal war actions. She can also legislate for green, renewable energy, which in turn will make utilities more affordable.

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Problem: Higher utility bills
Solution: Vote Rob Wittman out of office

Virginia families each paid an average of $170 more for electricity in 2025 compared to the previous year, in yet another example of how the cost of living has shot up across the board. Spiking utility bills have forced Virginians to make impossible choices while trying to manage their budgets.

The recent rate hike and last winter’s record freezing temperatures worsened the situation. Central Virginians have seen their energy bills double or even triple. Water utility increases are happening even as studies show data centers significantly threaten Virginia’s water supply. One solution is for the Virginia legislature to strengthen regulators’ permitting authority. Another is a state/federal moratorium on data centers.

Governor Spanberger is taking steps to tackle high energy costs,. She’s also intervening in the Dominion–NextEra merger case, skeptical of its benefit for the commonwealth. What is Rob Wittman doing? Making the situation worse. He once feigned concern about high energy bills driven by the data center boom: “I think people have very legitimate concerns, and that is: Who is going to pay the bill for the additional energy that’s demanded from this?...They go, ‘My power bill’s gone up because somebody down the road is building a data center.’”

That sounds reasonable until we understand a couple of things. First: Wittman is shifting the blame onto “somebody” when in fact he’s one of the culprits. Second: he hasn’t introduced or enacted any legislation that would compel data centers to pay their fair share of energy costs.

Wittman co-sponsored a 2026 bipartisan bill, the Ratepayer Protection Act (H. R. 9340) — conveniently six months before he’s up for re-election, but not at any other time during his 19 years in Congress. Otherwise, bills like Protecting Families from AI Data Center Energy Costs Act and the GRID Savings Act (S. 5199) have generally been sponsored by Democratic lawmakers.

Wittman’s H. R. 1 vote to end green energy credits raised average household electricity bills by about $110 a year. He ignores clean and renewable energy, with costly consequences for consumers: in VA-01 alone, nearly 70 clean energy projects worth $18.2 billion and creating 11,000 jobs are now threatened because of this provision. If the goal was to lower prices, why did Wittman and his cronies remove those credits? Because they care more about subsidizing fossil fuel companies than lowering your household expenses.

Dominion Energy claims data centers aren’t part of the problem. But as we’ve shown, data centers power Wittman’s pocketbook, not yours. He wants more data centers and intends to use the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to make it happen — even on federal land and military bases.

Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum have contributed to our higher utility bills as well. Those tariffs added over $800 million in costs to the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. Who will suffer the cost of those tariff fees? We know the answer to that, and it’s not Dominion Energy, or Trump, or Wittman.

In 2025, when the Trump administration suspended the leases of “five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast,” Wittman merely pledged to “remain engaged with the Department of Interior.” He also hasn’t objected to Trump’s latest effort to discourage wind-energy expansion: buybacks of offshore wind leases that total nearly $4 billion.

CVOW is still the fastest way to deliver unparalleled affordable power to Virginians, yet Rob Wittman opposes beneficial energy strategies at every turn: he ignores clean/renewable energy; votes against green energy credits; votes for more data centers; and takes donations from Big Oil to stay in office and keep the cost of living spiraling out of control.

We shouldn’t have to worry about whether our lights will stay on or our water service will be cut off. Shannon Taylor will focus on reversing the catastrophic effects of H. R. 1, including restoring green energy credits. She can legislate for clean and renewable energy sources. She can also support a federal moratorium on data centers to prevent further strain on existing power plants and thermal turbine generators, and use her federal leverage to help preserve Virginia’s eastern region groundwater supply.

Problem: Higher healthcare costs
Solution: Vote Rob Wittman out of office

Whether or not you’re one of the roughly 23,000 VA-01 residents who will lose Medicaid coverage under the law Wittman voted for, your healthcare is about to cost a lot more, or possibly even disappear. Wittman and his VA-02 counterpart Rep. Jen Kiggans “demanded” that H. R. 1 not include Medicaid cuts, only to roll over and play dead once it became clear that sacrificing their own constituents was the road to a tax cut for their billionaire donors. In Virginia, that sacrifice amounted to 300,000 Virginians at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage.

Wittman’s vote for H. R. 1 cut $911 billion over a decade from Medicaid — the largest cut in American history. The Joint Economic Minority Committee projected that over 20,000 VA-01 residents would lose insurance coverage as a result. Then Wittman lied about who would lose Medicaid in the aftermath of H. R. 1. In fact, he’s the one who took away your Medicaid, and it was his votes that increased premiums even for people with employer-based healthcare.

Wittman was also one of the members of Congress who failed to renew expiring ACA subsidies. The spike in premiums led 33,000 Virginians to drop their coverage as of April 2026. Overall, 100,000 Virginians could be impacted by the expired subsidies.

Wittman’s vote for H. R. 1 also meant a loss of $50.4 billion for rural hospitals. Thirteen rural hospitals in Virginia are vulnerable to closure. Our own district’s VCU Health Tappahannock Hospital is at highest risk.

Unsustainable healthcare costs inevitably reduce our quality of life — and for what? So the billionaire class can get richer?

We don’t have to suffer from a mountain of healthcare burdens. Shannon Taylor is the representative we need to fix the ACA, restore funding for our rural hospitals, restore Medicaid funding, and perhaps work towards universal healthcare (like every other first world country on the planet). Federal funding — our taxpayer money that should be used to address our needs — will drive down healthcare costs across the board. All it takes is voting Wittman out and electing a representative who understands that affordable healthcare is a basic right, and that excuses about “waste, fraud, and abuse” were always a lie.

Problem: Price increases on everything else your household needs
Solution: Vote Rob Wittman out of office

Trump’s tariffs have hurt businesses large and small. Unable or unwilling to absorb arbitrary tariff fees, businesses pass those costs onto consumers and even employees. Virginia business owner Shirley Modlin of Powhatan testified to the Joint Economic Committee that “[a]s a result of this upheaval which has created such uncertainty, our employees are suffering from stagnant wages and the possibility of loss of benefits.”

We’ve already noted that price increases from tariffs on imported inputs and consumer goods raise operating costs and reduce customers’ real purchasing power, which hits smaller retailers, restaurants, and local service providers. We reported that Q1 2025 GDP actually contracted by 0.3% as importers tried to front-run Trump’s tariffs. That means an uncomfortably high probability that the U.S. economy will suffer a recession in the coming months.

On the farming front, Trump’s tariffs created an unpredictable market, devastating once-healthy agricultural profits and transforming them into steep losses almost overnight. Wittman failed to support or introduce bills that would help prevent farmers from having to liquidate their assets. In 2025, Trump’s tariffs cost the average Virginia household approximately $1,700-$2,100. That includes increased costs for basic needs like clothing and cars. Wittman did nothing to stop these reckless tariffs from wrecking families’ budgets.

The Supreme Court held that “IEEPA does not give the President authority to impose tariffs” (more on that ruling here). Then a trade court ruled that Trump’s 10% global tariffs are illegal. We’re not surprised. Wittman has done nothing to try and stop the tariffs, or to refund the tariff fees to consumers; we’re not surprised by that, either.

If we vote Wittman out, Shannon Taylor can use her prosecuting experience to help investigate Trump’s illegal tariffs and provide oversight into where the tariff fees went. It’d be a 100% change from Wittman, who’s doing absolutely nothing to rein in Trump’s corrupt actions, or recover money for consumers like us. Leveraging congressional authority to stop the tariffs is one way Taylor can help small businesses, farmers, and consumers thrive — in our own district, in Virginia, and nationwide.

What’s the net result of all of the corruption and bad-faith sham governance? Our cost-of-living skyrockets while Rob Wittman votes for tax breaks for billionaires (and at least one for himself). Wittman sacrificed VA-01 jobs on the altar of fossil fuel profits — jobs we need to afford things like gas, groceries, and utility bills. And Wittman voted for H. R. 1, which cuts Medicaid by a trillion dollars over the next ten years and increases healthcare costs for everyone. That’s a decade of our hard-earned taxpayer money filling the coffers of billionaires. It’s money in their pockets, not ours.

The best way to help reverse the drain on our wallets — and the one that’s most directly in our power! — is to vote Rob Wittman out of Congress for good.

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Shannon Taylor's pledges to lower our cost of living

• Mandate jail time for politicians who steal our taxpayer funds

• Fight corruption by “self-interested politicians”

• Hold illegal monopolies accountable

• Protect our benefits by banning former members of congress from lobbying

• Reform our political system that raises costs

• Implement term limits to mitigate the number of representatives who vote for cost-spiking policies

Your vote for Shannon Taylor on November 3 will help you keep your lights on, your car running, your benefits intact, your children fed, and your earnings working for YOU.

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

We’ve also addressed other issues important to VA-01 in the “Broken Promises” series (Energy, Infrastructure, and Chesapeake Bay).

Today we’re pulling all of that together.

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Every politician makes campaign promises, and rarely do they keep them all. Circumstances change, priorities shift, resources come and go, and needs evolve over time. It’s unreasonable to expect a politician to accurately foresee the future, and follow through on all the promises they make as they compete for your vote.

But should we expect them to keep none of their promises, and to fail to fully deliver on any of their pledges?

Because that’s what Rob Wittman has done.

Nineteen years of failed pledges

Rob Wittman’s first campaign was in 2007, and he’s published a list of campaign issues in each subsequent election. The Internet never forgets: thanks to the WayBackMachine, we’ve been able to collect and analyze every single Wittman campaign pledge from the last 19 years – and so can you.

Organizing these pledges by the issues that voters most care about now, we’re asking the question:

Did Rob Wittman follow through on his campaign pledges?

(For certain voter priorities, Wittman has never pledged anything – Elections & Democracy, Agriculture & Farming, and Housing – though he has had some activity on them during his career.)

Here’s a summary of what we found, with links to articles (from the Wittman Watch archive) that explain each finding a little more. Read on for our analysis.

Of course we’re compressing a lot here; distilling all this information into a simple table is a challenge!

You’d think that almost 20 years in Congress would have given Wittman plenty of opportunity to actually deliver on the things he has said to buy your votes in the past. But look at the table: all but two items are “Broken,” “Disappeared,” “Never Delivered,” or (in the case of certain high-priority voter issues) “Never Promised” at all! He has only “Partially kept” one item, with one other “Mixed” result.

Let’s survey some of the “highlights,” listed by their priority for VA-01 voters. (We covered most of these in more depth in the WTF: Wittman Truth Files and “Broken Promises” articles; links are provided below.)

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Affordability

Wittman’s votes on H. R. 1 and his endless support for Trump’s tariffs have slammed VA-01 households’ budgets.

• Real average hourly wages fell 0.3% over the year through April 2026.

• Inflation peaked at 4.2% (May 2026), 3.5% in June 2026 (higher than in October 2024 under Biden – what happened to lowering prices “on Day One”?).

• Energy costs are up +15.7% year-on-year (YoY), and gasoline is up +26.7% YoY.

• Tariffs cost VA households an estimated $830-$2,100/year.

• 20,000+ VA-01 residents are projected to lose Medicaid coverage.

Jobs & the Economy

• After gaining jobs earlier in 2025, overall Virginia lost 10,400 jobs in 2025 and is projected to lose 17,800 more in 2026, our state’s first job loss in a non-pandemic year since 2009. And the annual figure understates the trend: more than 30,000 of those losses came in the second half of the year.

• Virginia fell from 10th in job growth in 2024 to 38th in 2025, to 48th by May 2026, having lost 51,400 jobs between May 2025 to May 2026 — more than any other state.

• Nationally, America lost around 200,000 jobs in the last three months, and the Trump administration had to correct job numbers down for several preceding months.

• Tariffs “particularly affect Virginia soybeans, poultry, pork, and tobacco,” according to Virginia Tech.

Healthcare

• 310,000 Virginians may lose Medicaid.

• Virginia hospitals lose $2B/year.

• 10 Virginia hospitals are on a national at-risk list, including VCU Health Tappahannock.

  • Cuts to rural hospitals are permanent.

  • The fund only replaces up to 37% of their losses, and lasts only five years.

• Healthcare for members of the Armed Forces, veterans, federal employees, and seniors remains unprotected.

• Prescription drugs remain costly.

Earned Benefits

• Virginia SNAP participation fell 14.4% in five months. Nationally, 3M+ people lost food assistance.

• The Social Security Administration now has fewer employees than at any point since 1967, impacting quality of service.

• Wittman’s vote on H. R. 1 accelerated the Social Security Trust Fund’s insolvency by a year; it now may run dry by 2032.

Immigration

• Wittman voted to hand $70 billion for ICE and Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term. All that money is just a bandaid because the underlying problems with immigration law remain unfixed

• Wittman helped kill the 2023-24 bipartisan Senate border deal, even though it was the most conservative in 40 years and was endorsed by the Border Patrol union.

Crime & Public Safety

• Despite claiming to “Back the Blue,” Wittman said nothing after what the Justice Department called likely the largest single-day mass assault on law enforcement in American history. Roughly 140 officers were assaulted, and prosecutors say even that number is too low.

Foreign Policy & Defense

• Wittman demands oversight of aid to Ukraine while voting against oversight of American strikes. This makes no sense.

• He has failed to capitalize on VA-01’s defense industry to build more jobs in the district.

Elections & Democracy

• Joined 120+ House Republicans on the Texas amicus brief to overturn four states’ results (Dec 2020).

• Voted to sustain the objection to Pennsylvania’s electors (Jan 6, 2021). Blocked the January 6 commission.

• Supports voter ID laws that would disenfranchise tens of thousands of American citizens.

Education

• Voted to advance the dismantling of the Department of Education after saying he opposed that. Title I, IDEA, Pell Grants and teacher preparation all flow through the department. Its staff has been cut roughly in half.

Energy

• Zero enacted energy laws of substance. Voted to eliminate clean-energy tax credits.

• Silent while the administration tried to cancel a Virginia project representing $6 billion in investment, 2,000 jobs and $3 billion in potential energy savings. A federal judge stopped it, not Wittman.

Environment & the Bay

• Virginia’s seafood industry is a $1.1 billion contributor supporting 7,100+ jobs. Roughly 6,000 Virginians work on the water, including Wittman’s own son. But the words waterman, oyster, crab, aquaculture, menhaden and seafood industry appear a combined ZERO times across 19 years of Bay pledges.

• The Bay was graded a C (50%) in June 2025, worse than the C+ of 2024 and barely changing from the C- (42%) when Wittman started in 2007. Eleven of 15 monitored regions are declining. Nitrogen reductions hit 59% of target. Deadline moved to 2040.

• Voted against the Inflation Reduction Act’s agricultural conservation funding in 2022, then voted for H. R. 1, which rescinded the remainder and stripped the nutrient-reduction targeting language.

• “I am focused on ways we can address climate change” appears on Wittman’s taxpayer-funded House site. The phrase “climate change” appears nowhere on the 2026 campaign platform.

  • One promise for constituents, a different one for voters.

Infrastructure

• Voted against the Moving Forward Act (2020) and against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), calling the IIJA the “Green New Deal in disguise.” But VA-01’s three largest infrastructure outcomes – which Wittman gleefully uses for photo-ops – were funded by the IIJA: Norfolk Harbor deepening, Long Bridge ($729 million) and $1.48 billion in Virginia BEAD broadband money.

• Virginia’s universal-broadband-access plan was not federally approved until Nov 2025, funded by the bill he opposed.

• No movement at all on “sustainable funding” for regional airports.

Fiscal Responsibility

• His 2010 platform pegged the debt at $14.294 trillion. It is now near $40 trillion after Trump/Wittman votes added almost $3 trillion to the debt in just the last 12 months.

• Lists three bills as accomplishments: No Budget No Pay Act; Stay on Schedule (S.O.S.) Resolution; Inaction Has Consequences Act. None have become law in 19 years.

• In 2007, he claimed he would eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.” 18 years later, he used the exact same phrase to sell the largest Medicaid cut in history.

Agriculture & Farming

• Voted three times (April 9, 2025, September 16, 2025, and February 10, 2026) to block House votes on tariffs that Virginia Tech found particularly affect Virginia soybeans, poultry, pork and tobacco.

• Voted for H. R. 1’s SNAP cuts, which reduce the food dollars flowing to local farms. Roughly 24 cents of every dollar spent on food at home reaches farms.

Housing

• He made no housing promise in 19 years and eleven campaign platforms – but recently sent a mailer to VA-01 residents about his “fighting to lower housing costs for families.” He’s literally done nothing except vote on the most recent bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the House 358-32 and the Senate 85-5, and which Trump unsuccessfully held hostage to demands for a voter ID law before it became law without his signature on July 10, 2026.

Guns / Second Amendment

• In 2013 he said, “As a gun owner myself, I believe that the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms must be protected.” He never proposed any bills on guns whatsoever, but consistently voted for expanded gun ownership and has an A rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund.

• All mention of guns and the Second Amendment has disappeared from his 2026 website, although he still lists it on his official House website.

Reproductive Rights / “Family Values”

• No stated position on reproductive health care, ever.

• His House site’s “Family Values” page is an adoption story containing no policy pledge, and the 2026 campaign platform has no section on the subject at all.

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You can’t believe him because he’s not even paying attention

Rob Wittman has been coasting for years, and you can’t trust a damn thing he says. Here’s a simple example: his live 2026 campaign platform says:

The debt has not stood at $34 trillion for roughly two years! Since Trump came into office again in 2025, the debt has shot up to $39.8 trillion, thanks to the billionaire tax cut giveaway, tariffs, job losses, Iran War, and so much more – all of which are 100% supported by Wittman. Rob is running for re-election on a platform he has not bothered to update because he isn’t even trying to be accurate. The fact is that Wittman only cares about the national debt when spending might help you, but otherwise he’s happy to mortgage your future in favor of his donors’ interests.

Wittman has been counting on your ignorance, your belief in his “moderate” personality, your faith that he is a man of honor who will follow through for you in Congress. Based on his 19 years of failed delivery on his pledges, do you really believe him now?

Nineteen years of failure has to end in November

When you see Wittman’s campaign pledges compared to the outcomes he’s delivered, what does it say to you?

• Has Rob Wittman succeeded in delivering on his campaign pledges?

• Would you be proud of this record were you in Wittman’s shoes?

• If Wittman were your employee, what kind of job review would you give him?

• Has he been straight with you about how he intended to spend his time and the power of your seat in Congress?

• Are your life and your community better today than when he started in Congress 19 years ago?

• Do you think you can believe what he’s trying to sell you now?

Here’s what it says to us: WTF, Rob? You’ve failed Virginia’s First District, and it’s time for you to go!

Shannon Taylor is the one and only alternative to Wittman in the November election – and she’s an outstanding choice. With 15 years of service as Henrico’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, Taylor knows how to hold people to account. She is dogged in her pursuit of justice, has lowered the crime rate in her county, and gone well beyond the scope of her job to ensure families and victims are cared for.

It’s time to fire Rob Wittman and hire Shannon Taylor. Join the fight for VA-01’s better future: donate to Taylor’s campaign and sign up to get out the vote.

Because we can’t afford Rob Wittman.

Rob Wittman’s has broken almost all his promises. What area has been his biggest failure? When you think about VA-01, what potential is most untapped and what could Wittman have done to improve it? Tell us in the comments!

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

• On Tuesday we urged you to vote (well done!) and talked about why we need to unite to beat Wittman.

• Last Thursday we highlighted some of our recent rapid-response social media posts. If you’re on social media, find us there! (All of our social links can be found at the very bottom of this post.)

• Here you’ll find the entire nine-part Wittman Truth Files series, which we recently wrapped up.

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We now have our Democratic champion who will win the November 3 election and replace Rob Wittman as our representative for Virginia’s First District: Shannon Taylor!

On Tuesday, she won a seven-way primary. And she didn’t just win – she won a majority of all the votes in nearly all counties across the entire district, even in that strong field of seven candidates. That’s remarkable, and we’ll dig into it more later.

Wittman is asking the people of VA-01 to elect him to a tenth term. He won re-election in 2024 by 13 points, and by comparable margins for a decade before that. He has never ever had to seriously compete for this seat.

That changes in 2026, and there are clear reasons why.

Taylor prosecutes the corruption that Wittman both enables and benefits from

Taylor is a lifelong Virginian and has been Henrico County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney since 2011, when she became the first woman ever elected to that office and the first Democrat to hold it in 24 years. The people of Henrico have re-elected her three more times, including in a 2019 race she took with 63% of the vote. She has served as President of the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys; her peers elected her to that position, demonstrating the respect she commands across the legal profession.

Titles are not achievements, but her record is outstanding:

• Taylor has tried thousands of cases.

• Her office reports a 90% homicide conviction rate.

• She built a program to help victims of human trafficking.

• She created a task force on the opioid epidemic.

• She has prosecuted fraudsters who targeted working families.

• She has taken illegal guns off the streets.

One case is particularly illustrative of Taylor’s success as a prosecutor. In 2020, Taylor charged Harry Rogers, a self-identified KKK leader who drove a pickup through Black Lives Matter marchers in Henrico. Taylor filed four counts of assault with hate crimes plus felony counts; Rogers was convicted and sentenced to six years, the maximum on each count. The judge rejected the hate crime enhancements because the victims were white, and Taylor publicly argued that the statute needed rewriting.

Taylor has a solid, 15-year career history of keeping our communities safe and successfully prosecuting criminals. Wittman’s career, by contrast, is a different story. He was a Shellfish Sanitation field director for the Virginia Department of Health before joining the Montross Town Council in 1986, then was elected mayor, followed by election to the Westmoreland Board of Supervisors, the Virginia House of Delegates, and eventually Congress through a 2007 special election.

Wittman has spent the majority of his career focused on being elected and re-elected. Taylor has spent hers being publicly accountable to her community.

Only one candidate fights for the people of VA-01

Voters report that their top three issues in this election are affordability, jobs and the economy, and healthcare. We examined Wittman and Taylor’s approaches for each and hoo-boy!

Affordability and the economy

Wittman’s answer to the skyrocketing cost of living hasn’t changed in a decade. He calls it a government spending problem and points to “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But that line has always been a lie, and his votes prove it. Wittman voted for H. R. 1 (the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill”), a bill he initially opposed, which permanently cut taxes for the very wealthy and added $3.4 trillion to the national debt.

Taylor’s approach focuses on the fact that your costs are high in part because a handful of corporations face no competition. She supports breaking up illegal monopolies in tech, pharmaceuticals, and banking; cutting taxes for working families; and going after price gouging and predatory interest rates. She wants to grow jobs through energy, infrastructure, and small business investment.

That’s a real difference in diagnosis, not just in tone. Wittman thinks the problem is government (and remember, he has spent 19 years in Congress). Taylor thinks a meaningful part of the problem is concentrated corporate power. You can decide which approach will lower your grocery and electric bills.

Healthcare

H. R. 1 cut Medicaid and food assistance. In our district, that lands on rural hospitals like Rappahannock General, on seniors, and on families one diagnosis away from real trouble. Wittman voted for it. He apparently thinks closing rural hospitals constitutes fiscal responsibility.

Taylor’s position is to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, lower prescription drug costs, and stop efforts to strip coverage or raise premiums – all things that Wittman has cut or has suggested will need to be cut to address “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Who Washington works for

Should our representatives work for us, their donors, or themselves?

Taylor’s “Serve the People First” agenda is specific, which makes it checkable.

• She will not buy or sell a single stock while in office.

• She proposes a lifetime lobbying ban on former members, and mandatory jail time of at least a year for any member who steals $10,000 or more in taxpayer funds.

• She backs a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

• She pledges 12-year term limits and says she will honor them whether or not the bill passes.

• She takes no corporate PAC money.

Wittman’s answer arrived on July 22, when he voted for the Stop Insider Trading Act and called it a restoration of public trust. That bill lets members keep the stock they already own and keep selling it, and exempts the executive branch entirely. Under the cover of this somewhat-reasonable bill, Republican leadership also bolted on a restrictive voter ID requirement, which is why very few Democrats voted yes.

For context on why this matters to him: during his time in Congress, Wittman has logged 206 trades across 110 companies, roughly $1.7 million in volume. And roughly 35% of his 2024 funding came from PACs, while only 2% came from donors giving under $200.

It’s clear who Wittman works for, and it isn’t the people of the First District.

People are voting with their wallets already

It appears that enthusiasm for Wittman and Taylor is reflected in their fundraising. Between April and June, Taylor’s campaign raised $754,466. Wittman’s raised only $617,555.

Yes, you read that right: even before winning the Democratic nomination, Taylor – a first-time congressional candidate – out-raised a 19-year incumbent who sits as vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Incumbents in safe seats do not get out-raised. Donors do not move money into a race they believe is finished.

Wittman has had a 19-year head start, and has $4,269,830 in the bank compared to Taylor’s $1,181,300. That is a 3.6 to 1 advantage right now. But the trend line is the story, and the district’s own history says that Wittman should be very worried. Glenn Youngkin carried VA-01 with 58.6% in 2021. Abigail Spanberger carried it with 51% in 2025, a swing of nearly ten points in four years. When a Republican firm polled the district this April, Wittman registered 35 percent favorable, while 20 percent of voters had no opinion of him, and another 23 percent said they did not know who he was. After 19 years on the job.

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Enthusiasm for Taylor is strong and sweeping

During the primary election race, commentators speculated on whether a moderate Democrat like Shannon Taylor would appeal to voters eager to institute radical change, or those in rural areas whose core concerns are perhaps not the same as those in Henrico (where Taylor works and lives).

The election results thoroughly dismiss those doubts!

As VPAP’s electoral map shows, Taylor won every county in the district, and in all but two counties she won a majority of the votes – and even in those two counties, she was at 47% and 49.7%! That’s significant. She competed against six other candidates who represented the broad spectrum of left-leaning politics, from the moderate to the super-progressive. Such a broad field would suggest the vote would be split among them, and the winner would get a plurality of votes. Instead, Taylor got a clear majority, especially in the more rural counties:

• King & Queen: 67%

• Westmoreland: 65%

• Middlesex: 63%

• King William: 59%

• Northumberland: 58%

• Lancaster: 58%

• Essex: 58%

• Richmond County: 52%

The Dems in this district believe that Shannon Taylor can beat Rob Wittman. And the polls suggest that the majority of Independent voters feel the same.

How the votes for other candidates might inform Taylor

Every candidate in this race, including Taylor, already shared some common priorities:

• lower prescription drug prices

• protection for Medicaid

• higher effective tax rates on billionaires

• reproductive rights in federal law

• saving rural hospitals, and

• getting big money out of politics.

The election results also show that 47% of the district favors policies represented by the other candidates. While it’s impossible to know exactly what drove those votes, we can hypothesize by examining the things these candidates highlighted most prominently.

• Agriculture, fishing, and the rural working economy

  • Breaking up agribusiness monopolies and a bipartisan Farm Bill; policies supporting farms, fishing, and working waterfronts; tariff relief for watermen especially; and supporting mental health services in rural areas.

• Healthcare beyond the ACA

  • Medicare for All / comprehensive universal healthcare / Medicaid for All. Taylor’s agenda focuses on maintaining or repairing what exists, whereas many candidates were pushing for fundamental changes.

• Labor law reform

  • Expanding worker protections, including the right to organize in the workplace.

• Immigration enforcement rebuilt around due process

  • Replacing ICE with a due-process system and hiring more immigration judges.

• Data centers, utility bills, and who pays for the buildout

  • Many candidates made this a centerpiece of their campaigns, putting communities ahead of corporate profit.

• Congressional war powers and a check on unilateral military action

  • Candidates were in favor of repealing open-ended war authorizations, and requiring congressional approval before action.

• Childcare, paid leave, and family stability

  • Framed as a driver of economic growth, universal childcare and childcare plus paid parental leave featured in several campaigns.

• A higher federal minimum wage

  • Consistently featured across several campaigns.

Taylor might incorporate some of these ideas into her campaign, though the balance is difficult. Several of these ideas are more “left-leaning,” but others – such as the focus on rural areas’ needs – suggest more right-leaning policies. Our hope is that Taylor will acknowledge that the district’s heterogeneity demands a broad range of solutions to fundamental problems on affordability, jobs, the economy, healthcare, Social Security, immigration, crime, foreign policy, election integrity, and education – you know, the things we know voters care about and that we already know Wittman has failed to address.

If you voted for Rob Wittman before…

…or if you’ve historically voted for Republicans, you may be torn about how to vote in November. But you see what’s happening in America. You know you didn’t send Rob Wittman to Washington to vote for a bill that cuts Medicaid in a district with so many rural hospitals. You didn’t send him there so your electric bill could explode while data centers get built. You didn’t elect him so he could hide in his office and refuse to appear at public town halls. Wittman has literally stopped showing up for you, in the district and in Congress.

Shannon Taylor spent 15 years prosecuting people who broke the public trust, without asking their politics (or their victims’ politics) first. If that record appeals to you, the party label next to her name shouldn’t matter. One of our favorite quotes is this:

And this is absolutely correct. It’s time to replace Trump’s pawn Wittman, and hold the would-be king Trump in check. Taylor is our knight, and is ready for the fight!

What to do next

VA-01 is now among the most watched races in the country. If this seat flips, the House likely flips with it.

Wittman has money and seniority. Taylor has momentum, a record, and a district that is shifting away from self-serving MAGA politicians. So what we need to do is pretty clear:

• Read Taylor’s full agenda.

• Compare it to Rob’s record.

• Donate to Taylor’s campaign.

• Volunteer (with Taylor’s campaign or the No On Wittman campaign) to get out the vote, write postcards, and more.

• See our Take Action page for even more ideas.

And vote on November 3, because we can’t afford Rob Wittman.

Update 8/6/26 09:37: Article updated to correct Taylor’s status as a past President of the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys.

How will YOU support the Taylor campaign for Congress? What do you see as the biggest difference between Taylor and Wittman? Tell us in the comments!

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

• Last week we wrapped up the Wittman Truth Files series with a post about Education. You can find the entire series here.

• On Thursday we delivered a summary of recent social media posts. Remember to subscribe on Facebook, Instagram, or BlueSky to get all the rapid-response content on Wittman.

We’ve been building up to a special day, and it’s finally here! Someone wants to say something to you:

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Today: Primary Election Day

Today’s the day, VA-01: the last day you can vote in the Democratic Primary Election, to decide which one of the seven candidates will go head-to-head with Rob Wittman for the First District’s seat in Congress.

Don’t know who to vote for? We’ve got you covered.

Want to hear from the candidates directly? Sure!

Don’t know why you should vote today? Here’s what we wrote in June:

So take 15 minutes today and go vote in the primary.

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Tomorrow: Unite to Beat Wittman Day

Whoever becomes the Democratic nominee tomorrow faces three months of truly hard work, and every one of us must do all we can to help them. Here’s why.

The latest polls show that, 60 times out of 100, any Democrat will beat Rob Wittman for the VA-01 seat in Congress. Our district is now a “Toss Up” race.

To put this into context:

• In 2020, Trump won VA-01 by 6.7%, and Wittman won by 16.4%, although the district was a slightly different shape then

• In 2022, Wittman won by 13%

• In 2024, Trump won VA-01 by 4.9%, and Wittman won by 13%

The fact that polls are showing this race as a “Toss-Up” now is remarkable, and it fits with the broader pattern across the country. FiftyPlusOne’s overall conclusion is that Democrats are favored to win majorities in the House and Senate in November, which was almost unthinkable even a few months ago — especially considering the Trump-ordered gerrymandering of multiple states.

The epic, unbelievable, but all-too-real failures of Donald Trump’s second term are crystal clear to the majority of American voters. They see the unquestioning, simpering loyalty to Trump of people like Rob Wittman, and they are reacting accordingly.

• Democratic voters are firm in their convictions that the 2024 election was a disaster for America.

• Moderate Republican voters are abandoning that party in droves.

• Independent voters — who truly do make the most significant difference in elections — have swung from moderate support of Trump in 2024 to absolute rejection of him, his agenda, and those who conspire with him to enact it.

But just as we can’t rely on Trump and Wittman to do anything but help themselves and their donors, we cannot trust their pitiful record to be enough to ensure their defeat in November. It all starts by uniting behind the Democratic nominee, starting tomorrow.

As much as the seven wonderful candidates might each make a spectacular representative for our district, and while they may have staunchly advocated for themselves (and against each other) through today, only the nominee will have a shot at taking the seat.

Tomorrow is Unite to Beat Wittman Day.

And this is where you come in. We need to ensure that all voters in VA-01:

• Know there’s a critical election on November 3rd

• Understand how Rob Wittman has failed them and will continue to fail them

• Know the Democratic candidate and how their policies will improve their lives

• Have a plan NOW to vote in the election (early, by mail, or on Election Day)

This is especially true for those Independent voters who make such a huge difference in elections. Those folks are influenced most by information from their friends and their social networks (online and offline). So making sure they have the information they need is vital!

And there’s no time to waste. So after you vote today, make a plan for what you’ll do tomorrow. We have lots of suggestions, and everyone can participate.

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No on Wittman

First, the No on Wittman campaign has established the foundations for everything that happens after today. Their volunteer sign-up suggests how you can get involved right now.

• Put up a yard sign

• Write some postcards

• Talk to your neighbors

• Have a neighborhood get-together

• Drop literature at doorsteps

The No On Wittman folks have free yard signs you can pick up. We also have a few [ahem] decorative and subtly politically neutral signs in our online store, if your community has rules you need to consider! 😉

In the meantime, Wittman has started running TV ads portraying himself as a “moderate” who relies on scientific principles to make decisions in Congress. It’s absolute hooey.

The Wittman campaign’s goal is to distract voters from the issues and make the claim that he is a reliable, trustworthy person with the district’s best interests at heart. But we’ve got his number. We know the truth.

We strongly encourage everyone to share RobsRecord.com with friends, family, and neighbors – it’s a quick and simple way to share the facts about Rob Wittman’s impact on VA-01, so folks can come to their own conclusions about him. Share the site often and broadly. Comments on Wittman’s own Facebook pages (for his official House office and his campaign) are especially helpful, as are comments in any discussions you see about affordability, jobs, inflation, tariffs, immigration, and so on – the site has pre-made snippets for almost everything!

Our Take Action page gives you easy access to:

• Join a local Indivisible group

• Build your local neighborhood community, with the help of our friends at Community Coalition for Common Ground

• Get engaged on urgent issues with Virginia Organizing

• Volunteer with your local Democratic Committee (they’re super lovely people!)

• Make donations to the candidate and associated groups

If you read news, consider writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. You don’t have to start from scratch! Use any Wittman Watch content you’d like, and send us snippets if you’re published – we love to show the world how Wittman Watchers like you are making a difference in their communities.

Whatever you do, get involved. Change doesn’t happen because we wish it – it happens because we make it. WE are the change. YOU are the change. And the First District has suffered enough under Rob Wittman’s feckless, anemic representation.

We can’t afford Rob Wittman.

Pass it on!

We’ve met some delightful people while volunteering for local candidates. In the comments here, share with us your favorite stories from volunteering in elections – for a candidate, at the polls, and anywhere else!

• On Tuesday we opened Wittman Truth File #9: Education, our final file in the series. You can find the entire series here.

• Last Thursday we analyzed Wittman’s broken promises on infrastructure in VA-01. He likes to take credit for money that he voted against!

Today we have a round-up of social media posts from the last few weeks — a lot has been going on! Our rapid-response content appears on our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky.

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to any of those and subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else). We’ll have a full newsletter next Tuesday.

In the meantime, check out RobsRecord.com, a new website that presents the facts on Wittman so voters can draw conclusions for themselves: RobsRecord.com. He has failed us on affordability, jobs and the economy, healthcare, immigration, protecting the Constitution, and so much more. For more, look at (and share!) RobsRecord.com and review our archive.

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This week, in our ninth and (probably) final file, we examine Wittman’s record the issue that shapes every child in VA-01: education.

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On his House website, Rob Wittman introduces himself as “the son and the husband of a public school teacher,” because he wants to project the idea of public service as a family commitment. He talks up STEM. He champions career and technical education. He says teachers are “invaluable.”

So here’s a fair question a constituent could ask: when the schools that made him were put on the chopping block, what did Rob Wittman actually do?

The answer is a familiar WTF pattern: warm words for the teachers in his family, and a voting record that diminishes the schools in your neighborhood.

Claimed to oppose dismantling the Department of Education, then voted to kill it

On March 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing his Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, to “facilitate the closure” of the Department of Education. McMahon has been candid that shrinking the agency down to nothing is, in her phrase, the “final mission.” This is the department that sends states the money for Title I (high-poverty schools), Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Pell Grants, and teacher preparation. The administration has cut the department’s staff by roughly half.

By November 2025, the administration stopped waiting on Congress, and proceeded to announce plans to shunt more than 50 programs and about $30 billion of Education’s annual funding out to the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury. The offices that oversee special education and civil rights enforcement were hit hardest by the layoffs. In July 2026, a House committee advanced a ten-bill package to make the fracturing of the Education Department permanent.

Wittman questioned Trump’s cuts to research funding at VCU, which was a good sign. But words mean nothing without actions to back them up. Wittman filed no bill to shield Education’s funding, and stayed silent as $30 billion in programs were shipped off to agencies with no experience running them. What he did do, in May 2025, was vote yes on the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (which he likes to refer to as the “Working Families Tax Cut Act” but is properly known as H. R. 1), the centerpiece of the very agenda by which he claims to be troubled.

Say one thing, vote the other, and let the silence do the rest. WTF, Rob?

VA-01 loses education funding while Wittman is hiding

About one in nine dollars in a Virginia public school comes from the federal government, and the districts that most rely on federal funding are the small, rural divisions of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula – the counties in Wittman’s district where a graduating class can be a few dozen kids.

Take the Rural Education Achievement Program, for which 30 rural Virginia school divisions qualify. Nationally it totals only $215 million, but rural experts say those dollars stretch far enough to pay for the aides who help struggling students make it to graduation. But the Trump administration has fired the Education Department statisticians who determine which schools qualify for the money. That cut means the whole program is under threat, and Virginia’s rural schools probably won’t get the funding they need to support students.

Then there’s special education. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal government promised to cover 40 percent of the extra cost of educating students with disabilities. It has never come close, and now the office overseeing that money is being dismantled. When those federal dollars slip, a county has only two options: cut something else your kids use, or raise your local property taxes to backfill the funding gap. That means the cost of special education is landing on VA-01 residents while Rob Wittman talks about “returning education to the states.” Translation: you pay for it. It’s deliberately misleading doublespeak.

College and trade school just got more expensive, with Wittman’s vote

Wittman defended his H. R. 1 vote by saying the bill would “invest in rural schools.” Read the fine print on what it actually did to the families paying for what comes after high school:

• Tightened Pell Grant eligibility

• Eliminated Grad PLUS loans

• Capped how much students can borrow

• Made forgiven student debt taxable starting at the end of 2025

Independent analyses describe the result plainly: a less borrower-friendly, less generous federal aid system. While Wittman claims the bill “invests” in education, the facts are clear: first-generation students, along with desperately-needed nurses and teachers across VA-01, are getting less help than before.

To be fair, the same bill did one constructive thing: it expanded Pell to short-term workforce and credential programs. That is a real positive for many. But celebrating opening a new door for trade-school students while quietly closing the loan window for everyone else is not an “investment” or a vote that helps the majority of VA-01.

Yes for parents’ rights; no for funding schools

Here is where Wittman is loudest. In March 2023 he voted yes on the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which passed the House 213 to 208. Its principles are hard to argue with: parents should know what is taught, see the school budget, and be told about violence at school. Reasonable. Popular. An easy vote for the cameras.

But look at the right to keep your child safe, and then look at what Wittman did when safety cost something. In 2022 Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which carried the largest school-safety investment in decades: $200 million for the STOP School Violence program, another $100 million through the COPS office, and hundreds of millions for school mental health. Wittman voted no. Why? Because it also regulated guns, and Wittman has a 92% rating from the NRA. He was in favor of parents knowing about violence at school. He was against the money to prevent that violence. (We covered this pattern in the crime and public safety file.)

And notice what is missing entirely. The Parents Bill of Rights passed the House and died in the Senate; it was a message, not a law. Meanwhile, the factors that actually determine whether a child in VA-01 has a well-qualified instructor went unaddressed. Virginia teachers earn about $5,900 below the national average and only 68 cents for every dollar compared to similarly educated professionals; this is the third-worst pay gap in the country. And our Commonwealth opened the school year with more than 3,200 unfilled teaching jobs, with special education among the most understaffed areas. On the messaging bill, Wittman showed up. On the paycheck and the staffing crisis, he was nowhere to be found.

We give Wittman due credit on one front: his Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act, which lets families use 529 savings for job training and credentials, and which has drawn more than 175 cosponsors from both parties. Notably, this does not help the majority of Virginians; use of a 529 plan requires discretionary income that can be saved, and the affordability crisis makes that impossible for most. (Wittman also crows about being the lead sponsor of the PROPEL Act to open Pell to short-term training, and he supported the 2018 Perkins V reauthorization that others authored. His PROPEL Act never passed, and the 2018 Perkins V law he backed was written by others.)

See the pattern for what it is: Rob Wittman shows up for the employer-facing pipeline and the culture-war floor speech. He bails on the money that keeps the lights on in the schoolhouse: the special-education funding, the rural grants, the teacher paychecks, the safety dollars. The son of a teacher has plenty to say about workforce credentials.

Ask him about the department that funds his mother’s old classroom, and all you get is a press quote and a yes vote for the people tearing it down.

What Wittman costs VA-01

Strip away the “son of a teacher” framing and the record is consistent: Rob Wittman is fluent on the parts of education that poll well or please donors, and absent on the parts that cost money and protect kids. Here is what that costs you:

The next time Rob Wittman introduces himself as the son and husband of public school teachers, ask him a simple question: which of his votes would those teachers thank him for? Ask him why he opposed dismantling the Department of Education in a press quote but voted for the agenda to destroy it. Ask him why the money for special education, rural schools, and teacher pay in VA-01 never seems to make his priority list. You can call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his mobile office hours, and remind him that in VA-01, the parents and the teachers are paying attention.

With that, the ninth file closes, and so do the Wittman Truth Files…for now. Nine issues, one consistent finding: Rob Wittman has mastered the language of the moderate and the voting record of MAGA. Share the files, and keep the focus on what Wittman does more than what he says. He’s hurting VA-01, and we can’t afford Rob Wittman.

The Wittman Truth Files (WTF) is a weekly series profiling the gap between Rep. Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record.

Love WTF? We have t-shirts and yard signs! Get yours here. (As always, we earn $0 on merch.)

If you found this useful, share it with a neighbor and your social channels, and subscribe to get next week’s installment right in your inbox.

• On Tuesday we opened Wittman Truth File #8: Elections & Democracy.

• Last Thursday we discussed how true American patriots have challenged America to live up to its stated ideals.

• One way to do that is to vote! Early in-person voting for the Democratic Party primary is open, and will continue through August 1. (Election Day is August 4.) You’ll find all the info you need to cast your ballot here (and our candidate guide here).

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Our district’s ability to thrive is capped by its infrastructure: roads and bridges, rail lines, energy generation and transmission, port transportation, broadband, and public transit. Without these, the people and businesses in our communities are isolated and insulated from opportunities and each other. Investment in infrastructure creates economic opportunities and improves the standard of living for everyone in VA-01. So why has Rob Wittman achieved so little on infrastructure in his 19 years in Congress?

Archived pages on the Wayback Machine (via Internet Archive) of his campaign websites, in addition to his actual legislative record, uncover the history of his campaign infrastructure promises. When he entered Congress in December 2007, infrastructure wasn’t on Wittman’s radar at all, even as bridges were falling apart, vast numbers of residents lacked high-speed internet access, and traffic congestion snarled up our communities.

• The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) was grappling with a maintenance backlog complicated by the rising costs of basic construction materials and a drop in motor fuel tax revenue.

• Severe underfunding in places like the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula had led to deteriorating rural roads, unpaved secondary routes, and inadequate infrastructure to handle growing traffic demands.

• Water quality infrastructure also needed improvement, including wastewater treatment and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

The state of Virginia had a long-term Transportation Plan, and the General Assembly took legislative action to address these problems. But to the detriment of VA-01, Wittman dragged his feet when it came to securing federal funding for infrastructure.

Throughout his Congressional career, Wittman’s pledges and actions on infrastructure have fallen far short of what the First District expected and needed – and even now, his 2026 campaign does not contain any concrete plans to improve infrastructure in VA-01.

While the past does not predict the future, it indicates what we can expect. And when we look at Wittman’s record on infrastructure, we learn that we can only expect mediocrity from him in the future.

Roads & Bridges

Wittman has described being able to “see the transportation needs first-hand” by driving around the First District. He has presented a mix of campaign promises and legislative efforts:

• Pledging to divert federal gas tax revenue back to Virginia

• Introducing the Responsible Highway Reinvestment Act (H. R. 6273) to invest highway trust fund dollars in interest-bearing accounts (and we wonder: is there any such thing as “irresponsible” highway reinvestment?)

• Securing language in the House Defense Authorization Bill for teleworking to alleviate transportation problems

One of these is immediately dismissable: his Responsible Highway Reinvestment Act never advanced in Congress. True to form, that doesn’t stop Rob from touting his submission of it as an achievement!

Wittman voted in favor of the FAST Act (H. R. 22), a five-year, $305 billion commitment to improve roadways and railways, and it passed with sweeping bipartisan support in 2015. This included $165 million to extend I-95 Express Lanes into Fredericksburg, which was once part of Wittman’s district. But that changed in 2021 when districts were redrawn. Aside from the fact that Wittman was only one tiny cog in the legislative machine that passed the bill, VA-01 as it exists today did not benefit from any aspect of the funding Wittman crowed about.

VA-01 infrastructure projects are largely state, local, and regional-driven (such as efforts by the Virginia Department of Transportation), and we acknowledge that many of these efforts are beyond the scope of any single Congressperson’s reach. As commuter choke points were causing severe traffic and safety issues, Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board continued to address regional highway congestion problems while Wittman played a negligible role — but you wouldn’t know that from his self-congratulatory press releases.

Wittman refers to his “support” for funding to replace the Robert O. Norris Bridge. When it came to addressing safety problems with the bridge, a Virginia citizen stepped up to protect his community in the summer of 2025:

Steve Bonner, who started the Facebook group “Replace the Robert O. Norris Bridge” nine years ago, has been advocating for safety improvements and bridge replacement… His advocacy efforts paid off in April [2025] when Virginia announced a replacement project is in the works, with construction expected to begin in 2028 — a decade sooner than initially planned.

What was Wittman doing? He convened stakeholders to find a state funding solution for the Norris Bridge; wrote to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, urging help to replace the Norris Bridge; and hosted a Norris Bridge Roundtable to discuss “innovative funding sources.” In other words, another round of performative meetings, letters, and verbal support. But when funding came through for the bridge project, Wittman hogged the spotlight. He applauded and claimed credit for the acceleration of the bridge’s replacement project, with zero mention of Steve Bonner’s advocacy.

Here’s another example of Wittman claiming credit for others’ work on roads and bridge infrastructure: removal of tolls on the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge. Wittman included a provision in the annual defense authorization to inquire about the Navy’s use of the bridge. This was simply a request for a usage report from the Pentagon, and had nothing to do with the bridge funding or tolls. The push to eliminate tolls on the bridge was ultimately resolved by Virginia state officials in 2025. Wittman would have us believe he was instrumental in the removal of the tolls. He was not.

Finally, in 2020 Wittman said he sponsored legislation to replace the Long Bridge that spans the Potomac River between Virginia and DC, to “ease congestion along the I-95 corridor and cut down on the commuter travel time that plagues many VA-01 residents.” His bill went nowhere. Yet when the opportunity came to secure the $729 million needed to fund the bridge during Biden’s term, via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, 2021), Wittman voted against it.

When federal infrastructure funding has come to Virginia, Wittman has:

• piggybacked on the success of others,

• claimed credit (or partial credit) for funding he either voted against or had little or nothing to do with procuring, and

• handed out checks even after voting against bills designed to deliver big benefits to VA-01’s infrastructure, like the IIJA.

Wittman’s one unambiguous transportation infrastructure success – his Yea vote on the FAST Act – benefited a former version of his district, not the one he represents now. Meanwhile, the bridge projects in today’s VA-01 (Norris, Coleman) are moving via state bond money, not anything Wittman did.

In 19 years Wittman has secured $0.00 actual funding for roads and bridges in VA-01.

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Port Transportation

The Port of Virginia and Norfolk Harbor are key for movement of maritime goods across our district. Improvements to each mean that VA-01’s agricultural industries can export more goods at lower cost, benefiting the region as a whole. Wittman noted the “urgent need for expansion” of the Port of Virginia, and deepening Norfolk Harbor to 55 feet for two-way ultra-large-ship traffic.

Wittman played roles in two actions that led to the funding of these projects:

1. He was part of the entire Virginia congressional delegation’s efforts to obtain “New Start” designation that released federal funding. This was led by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA03), Wittman, and Senators Kaine and Warner, and had the support of Reps. Connolly, Griffith, Beyer, McEachin, Cline (R-VA), Luria, Riggleman, Spanberger, and Wexton (nine Democrats, four Republicans). Wittman did nothing here that was unique; he was simply part of the group effort.

2. Final funding was approved through the IIJA that Wittman voted against.

As co-chair of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus, Wittman has acknowledged that Virginia’s shipbuilding industry is vital to our national defense, our industrial base, and our economy. He failed to sponsor any legislation related to this topic, but in June 2021 he applauded the inclusion of the Norfolk Harbor project in President Biden’s proposed budget. Wittman said, “I will remain a steadfast advocate for this project’s funding as Congress moves to appropriate final allocations.”

Five months later, in November 2021, he voted against the bill that actually delivered the funding and designations needed to make these key projects possible – projects for which he’d said he would “remain a steadfast advocate.” He said, “So while I voted against the infrastructure bill, I am ecstatic that the Port of Virginia received the funding I have worked so hard over the years to secure.”

That’s called voting no and taking the dough. He isn’t fooling anyone.

Broadband

Rural broadband has lagged behind what’s available in larger towns and cities. The lack of available broadband meant too many of VA-01’s rural households have been stuck with slow dial-up speeds. By 2010, state efforts to expand broadband were underway (although efforts were focused on primarily serving businesses at that time), and broadband appeared for the first time on Wittman’s site. Since then, he’s talked about it a lot:

• He pledged to “support broadband deployment” where needed.

• He tied broadband supply to job and economic growth.

• He touted his efforts to help First District organizations navigate the broadband grant application process.

• He co-sponsored the Broadband Permitting Modernization Act (H. R. 3370) to “modernize broadband permitting on federal lands,” but it never advanced out of committee.

• He hosted a “Broadband Roundtable” during which he gave federal, state, and local stakeholders an update on broadband “expansion efforts.”

• He convened the “1^st Congressional District Broadband Task Force” “to build on the good work that has already been completed (or currently in motion) by our state partners, regional planning districts and county governments.” He’s since held three meetings of the Broadband Task Force, which he then spun off into three “Community Broadband Field Seminars.”

All these task force meetings and seminars served to facilitate local groups’ comprehension of ongoing projects and available federal funding, but did nothing to deliver infrastructure funding. (Think of them as seminars about public information, and nothing more.) They produced no bill, no dedicated funding stream, and no report or set of recommendations on the record. They routed people toward money that Congress and the Commonwealth had already appropriated through programs Wittman didn’t author, and often voted against.

Wittman’s ineffective waffling on broadband could have continued forever except for one thing: COVID-19. Constituents faced the necessity of doing remote work/school while hamstrung by a lack of high-speed internet access. But even then, Wittman chose party politics over helping his own district.

Wittman positioned himself as “fighting” for broadband access and held some meetings, but he didn’t wield his power or influence to expand high-speed internet in meaningful or timely ways. If he had paid proper attention, and actually done his job as our representative, VA-01 might have received federal approval for universal broadband internet expansion much earlier than 2025.

Energy, Water, Airports

Wittman has done almost nothing to bolster energy generation and transmission, water and wastewater treatment, and airport infrastructure projects.

• Wittman has neither authored nor co-sponsored energy bills of any substance. He kept his mouth firmly shut while President Trump tried to cancel the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, threatening $6 billion in investment, 2,000 jobs, and $3 billion potential energy savings. Trump’s plan was eventually prevented by a federal judge, as Wittman stood by and did nothing.

• The Chesapeake Bay Accountability and Recovery Act that Wittman authored monitors spending on Bay recovery efforts, but it provides no funds to improve Bay health. As we covered a few weeks ago, the Bay’s water quality is now worse than when Wittman started 19 years ago.

• Despite pledging to work for “sustainable funding” for regional airports, Wittman has introduced no legislation, co-sponsored nothing, and done nothing.

It’s more of the same from Rob: lots of words, almost zero action, but consistent partisan voting that disregards the needs of people in VA-01.

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Wittman’s votes are decided by his party, not VA-01’s needs

Wittman has consistently voted against legislation that would go on to provide the most/best infrastructure benefits for VA-01. He voted against the Moving Forward Act (H. R. 2, 2020) and against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, 2021) — the two largest federal infrastructure vehicles of his time in Congress — calling the IIJA the “Green New Deal in disguise” on fiscal and process grounds. Yet VA-01’s three biggest infrastructure outcomes were funded by that very law:

• Norfolk Harbor 55-ft deepening (completed Feb 2024)

  • Final federal share via the IIJA

• Long Bridge (broke ground Oct 2024)

  • $729M via the IIJA’s intercity-rail program

• $1.48 billion in Virginia BEAD broadband funding

  • Created and funded by the IIJA

But his on-the-record opposition does not stop him from posting photo ops of the projects whose funding he voted against!

Earlier in his Congressional career, Wittman also voted against President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which delivered significant funding for Virginia:

• $694,460,823 in highway funds to help build and repair roads and bridges

• $116,105,505 to repair and build public transportation infrastructure

• $5 million to address airport safety and security, infrastructure, runway safety, increased capacity, and mitigation of environmental impacts

After 19 years in Congress, Wittman’s pattern of antagonistic votes shows that infrastructure has never been a high priority for him, despite its importance to literally every person living in his district.

Wittman’s votes have prevented economic opportunities in the First District, limited our kids’ education, restricted entrepreneurs from launching new businesses, made our exports more expensive, and endangered travelers as they traverse increasingly treacherous bridges and waterways.

VA-01 needs an infrastructure champion, not party patsy Wittman

During Wittman’s tenure, several themes have emerged on infrastructure:

• He barely mentions infrastructure unless and until something becomes a critical problem, and even then his efforts are performative rather than substantive. He presents his past nominal efforts as retroactive heroics. We’re not fooled.

• He voted against legislation that would go on to provide the most and best infrastructure benefits for VA-01. His interests are not dictated by our needs; instead, they’re aligned with his party’s tear-it-down political philosophy.

• When a positive result or outcome arises, he claims credit even when he had nothing to do with the achievement or, worse, actively worked to oppose it. This includes casting himself as the hero when he performed a minor administrative task, or when the effort involved work by a large group of legislators, including many Democrats.

• As with everything Wittman publishes, he grossly exaggerates what he has actually delivered for the district.

Virginia’s First District could have had a representative who cared about infrastructure from day one. We could have had a rep who consistently voted YES for massive infrastructure bills and vigorously fought to secure every cent of funding our district needs. Broadband expansion should have been addressed much sooner, and a forward-looking rep would have considered making internet access a utility rather than a privilege. Such a rep could have taken an active role in preventing the Trump administration and billionaires like Elon Musk from benefiting financially from “satellite technology at the expense of fiber.”

VA-01 could have had a rep who secured more funding to

• ease traffic congestion

• expand/update the district’s public transportation and rail

• prioritize the repair of roads

• create bridge preservation projects

• build more electric vehicle charging stations

• modernize the energy grid

• and much more.

We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. Virginia’s 2022 report card shows that our state has ongoing infrastructure needs. VA-01’s next representative must understand the need to secure consistent, long-term investments in infrastructure — not as an empty pledge or in response to pressing problems. Our future representative can embrace innovative infrastructure solutions and resilience: “[using] new approaches, materials, and technologies to ensure our infrastructure can withstand or quickly recover from natural or man-made hazards.” Such a representative can explore additional funding streams for infrastructure, such as progressive tax reform and ensuring that billionaires and multimillionaires pay their fair share.

This outcome is not out of reach, but we need to VOTE for it. On November 4, we must elect a representative who will strive to prioritize infrastructure and serve this district’s needs in a real way, not as a retroactive performance. Meet seven options better than Rob Wittman.

What do you think about Rob Wittman’s 19-year record on infrastructure? What should our next representative focus on to bring greater opportunities and prosperity to VA-01? Let us know in the comments.

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You’ve been told over and over that American elections are rife with fraud: stolen ballots, busloads of non-citizens, rigged machines. It isn’t true. It was never true. Study after study finds that voter fraud is rarer than being struck by lightning.

The real danger to your vote has never been someone sneaking one in. It’s someone with power trying to throw yours out, or preventing you from voting at all.

Time after time, Rob Wittman has supported rejecting and preventing legal, legitimate votes.

He tried to erase lawful votes from an entire state (that wasn’t even Virginia)

In December 2020 Wittman joined more than 120 House Republicans on an amicus brief backing a Texas lawsuit to overturn the presidential results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court threw it out.

Then came January 6. Hours after the mob stirred up by Donald Trump stormed the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, Congress returned to work. Wittman voted to certify Arizona, but he voted to sustain an objection to Pennsylvania’s votes. In other words, Wittman voted to reject another state’s lawfully certified electors and prevent them from being counted. He was one of 138 House members who tried this; the objection failed (138 to 282). Wittman’s stated reason was “unconstitutional changes” to Pennsylvania’s election, a theory that more than 60 courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, had already rejected. Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes were real. Wittman voted to erase them anyway, to keep Donald Trump in power.

Reflect on this: despite the Supreme Court having already rejected the reasons he cited, Rob Wittman tried to invalidate all of Pennsylvania’s’ electoral votes for President.

Four months later, the House took up a bill to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol. It would consist of five members chosen by each party, and was to be modeled on the 9/11 Commission, which was negotiated by a Republican. Thirty-five Republicans supported it. Wittman voted no, the only member of the Hampton Roads delegation to vote against it. He called a five-and-five bipartisan panel “too political.” So he voted to question the count, and also voted to bury the inquiry into the violence of January 6th. Yet he claims to want to uphold election integrity. WTF, Rob?

In January 2025, when Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants, including hundreds convicted of assaulting police, Wittman said nothing. He co-sponsored a “Back the Blue” Act, to impose mandatory minimum sentences on people who assault law enforcement officers, but meekly slunk away into the shadows when Trump pardoned criminals convicted of beating Capitol Police officers with flagpoles. Wittman’s hypocrisy is off the charts.

And none of this is ancient history. Rob Wittman’s own record shows what he does when the results are inconvenient: he grasps at straws to find rejected and illegitimate grounds for his actions; he votes to discard another state’s votes; and he votes to keep you from finding out how the January 6 violent insurrection happened. Ask yourself what he will do the next time an election doesn’t go the way his party wants. You know the answer: to hell with election integrity.

The problem they invented, and the “fix” that threatens your vote

Only citizens can vote in federal elections; that isn’t a debate, and no one disagrees with it. (Legal residents can vote in some local elections in certain states – but only if people in those localities approve it and never in federal elections.) Illegal voting has been a federal crime punishable by prison and deportation since 1996. Non-citizen voting in federal elections is not a real crisis, and we have the receipts to prove it.

The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, keeps a database of “proven” voter fraud going back decades. Out of roughly 1,500 cases, only about 68 involve non-citizens voting. When Utah audited its entire roll of more than two million voters, it found one non-citizen registration and ZERO non-citizen votes. Federal citizenship checks flag just 0.04% of cases, and many of those turn out to be citizens.

Here’s the part that should stop the fearmongering cold. When the Associated Press hunted for fraud across the six battleground states Trump disputed in 2020, it found fewer than 475 possible cases, 0.15% of Biden’s margin, and every specific case it documented was a Trump supporter voting twice or casting a ballot for a dead relative. Most people actually charged with fraud have been Republican voters: residents of The Villages, Florida; men who voted for Trump using a dead spouse’s ballot; an Iowa woman convicted on more than 50 counts to help her Republican husband. Every one of them got caught. This shows that the system isn’t broken – it’s working!

But facts have never stood in the way of Wittman and Trump’s attempts to skew elections in their favor, so they’ve invented the “voter integrity” and “voter ID” problem out of thin air. In April 2025 Wittman voted yes on the SAVE Act, and in February 2026 he joined every voting House Republican to pass its more extreme successor, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register, a photo ID to vote, and new hurdles for mail ballots.

Why did they do this? Simple: they’re targeting voters who they fear will not vote for them in a free and fair election. An estimated 21.3 million eligible citizens don’t have ready access to documents like a passport or birth certificate. That includes married women whose IDs no longer match their birth name, rural voters, older Americans, and service members overseas. When Kansas tried a version of this, it blocked roughly 31,000 eligible citizens, 12% of applicants, before a court struck it down. The barrier stopped thousands of legal voters and almost no fraud.

Virginia has already run the experiment, too. In 2024, the state flagged about 1,600 people as suspected non-citizens and purged them from the rolls inside the 90-day window federal law protects, and ended up kicking eligible voters off the list, with the Supreme Court’s conservative majority allowing it to proceed with no explanation. That’s the SAVE Act in miniature, in our own commonwealth: imperfect data, real citizens blocked. Wittman voted to make it national.

On July 16th, Trump pivoted to another strategy to sow doubt about the integrity of federal elections, by claiming that China and “the deep state” interfered in the 2020 election. As Politifact details, his speech was an exercise in disinformation, omitting key context and facts to weave a wholly new, fabricated, and untrue story. And equally important is what he didn’t say because it isn’t true: that voting machines were hacked; that votes were manipulated or changed; that non-citizens voted. The goal of this speech was to stir up support for the SAVE America Act and other measures that will inhibit voting or excuse interference by federal authorities in state-run elections.

Rob Wittman and Donald Trump are not committed to election integrity. They are committed to ensuring partisan advantage, and they spread disinformation and fear in order to create the conditions for manipulating the vote.

Follow the money

Whatever your party, you probably suspect the system runs on money you don’t have. On that, Wittman is a case study.

The detailed 2026 Q2 fundraising data isn’t available at the time we’re writing this article. However, we know that about 21% of Wittman’s campaign money has historically come from the defense and defense-aerospace industries, the sector that ranks #2 among all his donors. Wittman is Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, which means he helps write the checks for the very contractors writing checks to him. Meanwhile, just 1.5% of his money came from small donors giving under $200, where a typical member gets 15 to 20%. Almost no individuals in VA-01 are funding Rob Wittman, but the industries he oversees are.

There was a bill to change this. The Freedom to Vote Act would curb the dark money flooding our elections and end partisan gerrymandering. Wittman opposed that framework, and voted no alongside every House Republican on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have restored federal protection against discriminatory voting changes. On the actual rigging of districts, when Trump ordered red states like Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri to redraw their maps mid-decade to manufacture Republican seats, Wittman said nothing, while damning Virginia’s own redistricting attempt that was approved by the state’s voters but canceled by the Virginia Supreme Court. His pattern again: strategic silence and turning a blind eye in one instance, but outrage and bluster when his own partisan advantage is threatened.

Wittman voted to make it harder for you to register, and against the one bill that would have made it harder for billionaires to buy election outcomes.

What it costs VA-01

Strip away the “election integrity” branding and the record is consistent: Rob Wittman treats your vote as negotiable when it’s inconvenient, and invents fraud crises to lock in his own party’s electoral advantages. Here’s what that costs you:

The next time Rob Wittman talks about protecting “election integrity,” ask him why he voted to reject Pennsylvania’s electors, why he was the only member of our delegation to vote against investigating January 6, and why the voter ID measures he keeps backing would block citizens from voting for no good reason. You can call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his next mobile office hours, and remind him that in VA-01, the voters have the final say, and intend to keep it that way.

The ninth (and final) Wittman Truth File will be opened next week.

The Wittman Truth Files (WTF) is a weekly series profiling the gap between Rep. Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record.

Love WTF? We have t-shirts and yard signs! Get yours here. (As always, we earn $0 on merch.)

If you found this useful, share it with a neighbor and your social channels, and subscribe to get next week’s installment right in your inbox.

• On Tuesday we opened Wittman Truth File #7: Foreign Policy.

• Last Thursday we discussed how and why to vote in the VA-01 Democratic primary.

• Speaking of the primary: Early in-person voting is open, and will continue through August 1. (Election Day is August 4.) You’ll find all the info you need to cast your ballot here (and our candidate guide here).

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George Washington warned us about people like Rob Wittman, who love to wrap themselves in the flag while working to take away our Constitutional rights and liberties. As we’ve described, Wittman is a blind patriot: intolerant of criticism, staunchly obedient to his leadership, preoccupied with foreign threats, and performative in demonstrations of patriotic fervor. President Trump has begun to weaponize these instincts in a new attack on his political foes: Trump’s opponents are now being painted as communists, Marxists, socialists, or similar. His supporters are following along.

It is, of course, preposterous, as Karen McPherson eloquently describes:

When Trump says “America will never be a Communist country,” he is not speaking as an economist or political theoretician. He is speaking as a demagogue – much like A. Mitchell Palmer of the first Red Scare or Joseph McCarthy of the 1950s era blacklists. Neither of them was really worried about Communism – they were using the term as a scare tactic to accrue personal political power. That’s all Trump is doing.

It’s an indication that Trump is resorting to desperation measures to influence his supporters. At its heart is the idea that love of country demands fealty to the President and eager acceptance of whatever he and the nation’s government does in our name, no matter how morally or strategically wrong they may be.

With this attack, Trump has a problem: a look at history shows that love of America relies on the opposite of his ideas.

Fealty is not patriotism

The signers of the Declaration of Independence didn’t agree with their king and pledge fealty to his rule; instead they listed his tyrannical acts and devoted their lives, their honor, and their fortunes to creating a free, independent republic. If they were alive today, would they meekly accept the country as it exists, or would they continually demand better of it? We now consider them the original American patriots, but in their own time their king and many of their peers considered them rebels and traitors.

In writing the Constitution, the Founders of America understood that improvement of our nation would be a continual process. They wrote: “… in Order to form a more perfect Union… [we] ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” A more perfect Union. They knew this work would never be complete. We must always strive for greater heights, and that striving is central to the idea of America and being an American. It requires that patriots demand that America lives up to its founding ideals in ways that weren’t always discernible or apparent, and that we adjust our country’s government and Constitution as we experience, succeed, fail, and learn. This was what the Founders expected:

Our Constitution would be quite different if Jefferson’s expectations had been met! Instead, we have used the Constitution as a guiding framework while building legislation and governance that help us in our pursuits of happiness. Over and over in our history, across the entire scope of our country’s development, patriots’ love of America has been a catalyst for formation of that “more perfect Union.”

This is vitally different to the deceit that Trump established through MAGA: that going backwards would restore America to a former greatness. How is that progress? How does that resemble what the Founders envisioned of us, for us? It patently does not. The Founders understood that time’s arrow flies in one direction – onwards, and only forwards – and that the nation would improve with time if we were brave enough to embrace the challenges of it.

And, as we face down the growing threats of people like Rob Wittman in November, here’s the most important thing to remember: nearly all of America’s most lauded patriots were accused of being unpatriotic, un-American, or a threat to the nation — while what they were actually doing was holding America to its stated ideals. Trump, Wittman, and MAGA do not want America to reach for its ideals, but instead to return us, permanently, to an imperfect and selectively glorified past. America’s greatest patriots did not settle for the imperfect past in which they lived, and nor will we. We take inspiration from their examples.

Abolition and Racial Justice

• Frederick Douglass was called a dangerous agitator and a threat to social order before he was lauded as a civil rights pioneer and intellectual giant.

• Ida B. Wells was called incendiary and run out of Memphis for her anti-lynching journalism.

• Thurgood Marshall was considered a radical troublemaker by Southern states before he became a Supreme Court Justice.

• Medgar Evers was murdered in his driveway; he later had a federal building named after him.

Labor and Economic Justice

• A. Philip Randolph was regarded as a radical for organizing Black railway workers; he is now recognized as one of the architects of the civil rights movement.

• Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned for opposing World War I and ran for president from his jail cell; he is now celebrated as a founding figure of the American labor movement.

• Mother Jones was called “the most dangerous woman in America” by a U.S. senator; she organized child workers and miners.

Women’s Rights

• Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting illegally and convicted; her face is now on the dollar coin.

• Alice Paul was force-fed in prison while on a hunger strike for suffrage; she later drafted the Equal Rights Amendment.

• Pauli Murray was the Black queer legal theorist who in 1962 developed the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause applied to sex discrimination, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg used nine years later to dismantle gender discrimination in court. Murray was dismissed as too radical on race and gender simultaneously for most of her career but is now recognized as foundational to both the civil rights and women’s rights movements.

Free Thought, Civil Liberties, and Conscience

• Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title and prosecuted for refusing Vietnam-era military service; the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction, and he became one of the most beloved Americans of the twentieth century.

• Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War and was considered an eccentric crank; his essay on civil disobedience later influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

• Roger Baldwin founded the ACLU in 1920 and was considered a communist sympathizer; civil liberties organizations now consider him foundational.

Environment and Public Health

• Rachel Carson was attacked by the chemical industry as a hysterical amateur after publishing Silent Spring in 1962; her work led directly to Nixon banning DDT and the creation of the EPA.

• John Muir was considered a romantic oddball for arguing that wilderness had intrinsic value worth protecting; he is now considered the father of the national park system.

Journalism and Whistleblowing

• Upton Sinclair was called a socialist propagandist for The Jungle; he helped produce the Food and Drug Administration.

• Daniel Ellsberg was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for releasing the Pentagon Papers; charges were eventually dismissed, and his disclosures are now widely credited with helping end the Vietnam War.

LGBTQ Rights

• Bayard Rustin was pushed to the margins of the civil rights movement — even by allies — because he was openly gay; he organized the 1963 March on Washington and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.

• Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, was assassinated; San Francisco now has an airport terminal named after him.

Indigenous Rights and Anti-Imperialism

• Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph resisted U.S. government policies that are now officially acknowledged as atrocities.

• Mark Twain opposed American imperialism in the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century and was considered anti-patriotic; his critique is now standard historical consensus.

While many of these individuals are considered American heroes today, it’s vital to note that “hero” status is not an affirmation of total goodness. Most of America’s founders owned enslaved people. Mark Twain bankrupted his own publisher. John Muir made many racist statements. We must see all these individuals as the flawed people they were, just as we are in our own ways, now. However, we can firmly agree that their patriotism to America was best expressed when they risked their lives, honor, and treasure to help our nation change for the better.

Great Americans understand that America’s greatness is a shared, unending project

America’s patriotic heroes are a diverse group. They include Native Americans, Asians, wealthy individuals, impoverished people, Black men and women, Europeans, gay people, capitalists, Africans, socialists, environmentalists, justices, South Americans, writers, and an unlimited range of other categorizations. Many are captured in the America’s Tapestry exhibit, currently at the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg. Embroiderers in the states that made up America’s 13 founding colonies have produced panels that enrich “our understanding of our shared heritage.” Virginia’s depicts the lead mines of Wythe County, where enslaved Black people worked alongside Welsh immigrant miners to produce the musket balls that (it is believed) were fired in the decisive Battle of Yorktown. One of these Black men, named Aberdeen, was granted freedom by the House of Delegates because of his long, patriotic service to America’s independence.

In Democracy in America, the 1835 study of the American political system, the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

America’s “greatness” has always been our ability to pioneer, embrace, and navigate change, and all the differences and challenges that changes present. Our nation has improved itself, and the fortunes of those who are born and choose to live here, by demanding more of each other, by questioning how to go further, and by committing to doing it for our greater good. That was the ethos of Washington and other great Virginians, who also had things to say about patriotism:

• Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty, or give me death!” (1775 speech to the Second Virginia Convention), rallying colonists toward revolution.

• Thomas Jefferson: Wrote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and framed patriotism around the enduring right of citizens to reform their government.

• James Madison: Argued that “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty,” tying patriotism to an informed citizenry.

• Woodrow Wilson: Declared that “loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice,” and spoke of America as only meaningful as a collective — “something only if it consists of all of us.”

• Arthur Ashe, the first Black man to win Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open, and who became equally renowned as a civil rights activist, author, and humanitarian, spoke pointedly about patriotic love requiring honesty. He described his complicated feelings as a Black American, noting that “true patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”

• Maggie Walker, the first first Black American woman to found and serve as president of a bank, in Richmond, VA, declared in 1914 that “The greatest power on earth for the righting of wrongs, is the power of agitation. When the spirit and power of agitation die among a people, they are doomed beyond all hope of resuscitation and redemption. So important is this power, that it is guaranteed to the people through the mandates of the Constitution of the United States.”

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It’s our time now

And so we come to President Trump and willing acolytes like Rob Wittman. Consider the quotes above. How many can we say describe either man? If they are not living up to the ideals of America, and American democracy, what must we do?

The answer is obvious: we must eagerly confront the future – and never shrink from it, as the MAGA movement would prefer – with the same indomitable spirit of America’s past patriots. Each of us can (and must!) play a role in making sure that America lives up to its ideals, and the people we elect to Congress and the White House must do the same.

As we do this most patriotic and most American work, we might be called traitors, or communists, or some other name that’s been invented to label us as somehow un-American. When that happens, we should remember people like Daniel Ellsberg, Bayard Rustin, Rachel Carson, Muhammed Ali, and Susan B. Anthony – they were pilloried, condemned, and dismissed, only to be proven in time to be true American patriots.

We don’t expect or need a rebellion to reassert America’s ideals as pre-eminent, to make them more alive than they seem today, because they are already here: in you and all of us who are working to replace Rob Wittman and people like him in Congress, and in every government office in Washington, D.C. and around the country.

Trump, Wittman, and their supporters can call us whatever names they want. Their accusations are unfounded and are untrue, a product of their desperation to distract voters from the facts of how badly this administration is failing in practice and in principles. Our patriotism demands we risk our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor for Virginia and the country we love, this American experiment, our republic, our United States of America. One step at a time, our ideas will win because they are America’s ideals and, one way or another, our work will forge a more perfect union.

Who is your personal favorite American patriot? How do you express your patriotism in your own community? How do you think you can help your neighbors understand how Wittman uses patriotism as a shield to hide his terrible votes? Tell us in the comments!

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

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On defense and foreign policy, Rob Wittman holds the reins. He is the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of its Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, which holds primary jurisdiction over the military’s missiles, ammunition, and munitions programs. He sits on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and co-chairs the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus. Notably, he also represents a district built around the military: the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren and its roughly 4,700 scientists and engineers, the Naval Weapons Station at Yorktown, Fort Walker, and tens of thousands of Virginia’s 700,000-plus veterans.

Few members of Congress are better positioned to demand a strong, coherent American foreign policy. Wittman has chosen instead to satisfy Trump’s every whim — falling in line vote after vote, and staying silent exactly when his committee gavel and his stated values demand a potent response. His full-spectrum abdication is shredding America’s credibility around the globe.

Bowing to the strongmen he claims to oppose

Let’s go back to April 2024. Wittman voted for the $60.8 billion Ukraine aid package, calling himself “steadfast in supporting Ukraine’s fierce fight to maintain its independence.” He even introduced legislation to create a special inspector general to “account for every American dollar sent to Ukraine.” Wittman said what the majority of the country wanted to hear.

Then Trump changed sides. After the February 2025 Oval Office ambush of Ukraine’s President Zelensky, the administration paused all military aid to Ukraine and six months later, it, rolled out a literal red carpet for Vladimir Putin — an ICC-indicted war criminal — at a summit in Alaska, complete with an F-22 flyover, before pressing Ukraine to surrender territory. Analysts across the spectrum warned that Trump has consistently capitulated to Moscow: ending aid, blaming Zelensky instead of Putin, and undermining NATO.

And Wittman — who lists Russia among the threats he exists to deter, who called himself steadfast — said nothing. No statement defending the aid he’d already championed. No objection to the red carpet for Putin. When the House passed its 2026 Pentagon spending bill with zero dollars for Ukraine — acquiescing to Trump’s request, after a committee effort to add funding failed — Wittman voted yes anyway. The Ukraine assistance he’d funded at roughly $14 billion in 2024 collapsed to a token $400 million, less than 3% of the original funding. So much for Wittman’s “steadfast” support of Ukraine; he had nothing to say when the dollars simply stopped.

Wittman was (and is) also duty-bound to object to the unqualified and conflicted individuals who have been empowered in diplomacy. Trump handed the most sensitive negotiations of the era — Ukraine, Iran, Gaza — to real-estate friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, men with no foreign policy experience and sprawling financial entanglements across the same Gulf states with whom they’re negotiating. Witkoff was even reported to have coached Putin’s aide on how to pitch to Trump. A committee vice chairman who took oversight seriously would be holding hearings. WTF, Rob?

Trashing our allies, handing our rivals the win

An alliance-minded member of Congress might be expected to defend America’s alliances. Instead, Wittman has voted to attack them and to allow Trump to threaten them.

Trump declared a bogus “fentanyl national emergency” to slap 25% tariffs on Canada — our closest ally, a NATO and Five Eyes partner, and our single largest trading partner — while musing about annexing it as the “51st state.” When the House voted 219–211 in February 2026 to terminate those tariffs, six Republicans crossed the aisle. Wittman was not one of them. He’d already voted to protect Trump’s tariffs on Brazil in September. Wittman, a self-styled defender of American strength, voted to treat partners as adversaries and to hand Congress’s Constitution-endowed tariff power to a president who invents emergencies to seize more power for himself.

Then came Greenland. Trump refused to rule out using military or economic force to take the island from Denmark, a NATO ally. The moment America menaces an ally’s sovereignty, the alliance’s core promise dies. It’s a gift to the very rivals Wittman claims he wants to contain. His response? Silence; not a single public statement, even though other Republicans (Speaker Mike Johnson; Sens. Collins, Murkowski, and Tillis; and Rep. Bacon) voiced their own concerns. Allies watching Washington tax Canada and threaten Greenland draw the obvious lesson — that America’s word is now conditional — and quietly begin hedging toward the very powers Wittman suggests he’s countering through his committee assignments.

Most revealing is what Wittman did to America’s ability to compete without firing a shot. He voted twice for the Rescissions Act of 2025, which clawed back $7.9 billion in foreign aid and helped kill USAID. Among the casualties: the democracy, anti-corruption, and independent-journalism programs the U.S. runs in former Soviet republics and across the developing world (precisely the terrain where China and Russia race to buy influence), and where Moscow-friendly autocrats moved within weeks to crush the civil-society groups that American funding had shielded. Beijing spends billions on ports and infrastructure to win the soft power contest. Wittman voted to pull American soft power off the field entirely. For a congressman who lectures endlessly about the Chinese Communist Party, unilaterally disarming in the fight for influence makes no sense.

Blank checks for war, empty magazines

This is the sharpest contradiction of all. As vice chairman of the Armed Services Committee — whose subcommittee is responsible for the nation’s munitions — Wittman has voted repeatedly to let Trump wage war without the required congressional approval, even as those wars burn through the exact weapons he’s supposed to safeguard.

Since September 2025, the administration has blown up dozens of alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean and Pacific — including an illegal follow-up strike that reportedly killed survivors — and threatened a full war on Venezuela, all without congressional authorization. When Democrats forced war-powers votes to rein it in, only a handful of Republicans — Massie, Bacon, Greene — broke ranks. Wittman voted to let the strikes continue. He did the same on Iran: as the administration bombed Iranian targets without a vote, the House took up war-powers resolution after war-powers resolution, and each time Wittman voted against Congress’s own constitutionally-mandated authority — even when the House ultimately passed a rebuke over GOP objections. (We saw this again on July 8th when, despite Congress having passed a War Powers Resolution to require Trump to get Congressional approval for continuing the war with Iran, the U.S. launched new missile strikes against that country. So far, Wittman has said nothing about this.)

What did those unauthorized wars cost the arsenal Wittman oversees? In just 12 days of the 2025 Iran war, the U.S. fired off about a quarter of its entire THAAD interceptor stockpile (a weapon that takes years to build), plus 80 SM-3 interceptors and 14 of its scarce bunker-buster bombs. As the fighting escalated into 2026, the Center for Strategic and International Studies found the U.S. may have burned through more than half its prewar inventory of four out of seven critical munitions, with rebuild times of one to four years — the very stockpiles needed to deter China in the Pacific and to resupply allies. The Navy alone fired more than 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the Army nearly half its long-range Precision Strike Missiles, in the campaign’s opening weeks. THAAD batteries were even pulled from South Korea to feed the Middle East fight. Defense analysts warned these inventories were already too diminished for a war with China before the shooting started; now the hole is deeper, and it will take years and billions of dollars to fill.

Pause on this understanding: Wittman, as the one member of the House most responsible for munitions readiness, is cheerleading — and shielding from oversight — operations that have hollowed out the supplies America would need in a war with China, the adversary he never stops invoking. Blank checks for war-making; empty magazines for the fight that actually matters. WTF, Rob?

Oversight: the responsibility he refuses to fulfill

Wittman’s committee exists to hold the Pentagon accountable. That job got real in December 2025, when the Pentagon’s own inspector general found that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put U.S. service members at risk by posting the timing, targets, and aircraft of a pending Yemen strike into a Signal chat that had accidentally included a journalist. Any junior sailor who leaked that would have been prosecuted. From Wittman, there was no break with the administration and no demand for accountability.

Wittman also keeps his mouth shut about foreign policy that is increasingly and openly run for private profit. The government of Qatar gifted Trump a $400 million luxury jet to serve as Air Force One, which ethics experts and even some Republicans called a blatant violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. It was formally accepted by the Defense Department that Wittman’s committee oversees, and required hundreds of millions in taxpayer-funded security retrofits. Meanwhile Gulf governments poured billions into Trump- and Kushner-linked ventures — a $2 billion Saudi investment in Kushner’s firm, plus Trump-branded towers in Doha and Dubai — even as those same governments sought favors from Washington. A foreign power buying influence over American defense decisions is exactly the precedent a national-security committee should exist to stop. Wittman asked no questions and did nothing about it.

What it costs VA-01

The pattern is the one we’ve documented in every WTF: Rob Wittman either says one thing and does another, complying whenever Donald Trump wants something; or he keeps quiet and hopes we won’t notice what he’s doing.

The next time Rob Wittman calls himself a national-security leader, ask him why he had nothing to say when Trump bowed to Putin, why he voted to tax our closest ally, why he helped disarm us against China, and why he keeps handing this president a blank check for war. Then call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office and remind him whose district this is.

The eighth Wittman Truth File will be opened next week.

The Wittman Truth Files (WTF) is a weekly series profiling the gap between Rep. Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record.

If you found this useful, share it with a neighbor and your social channels, and subscribe to get next week’s installment right in your inbox.

• Last Thursday we talked about how and why we must reclaim America’s symbols, including our flag.

• On Tuesday we opened Wittman Truth File #6: Crime & Public Safety.

• Last week we published our one-stop guide to the candidates running to unseat Rob Wittman. Check it out before you vote, and share it with everyone in VA-01!

• Early in-person voting for the VA-01 primary is open, and will continue through August 1. (Election Day is August 4.) You’ll find all the info you need to cast your ballot here.

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You have an exciting opportunity right now.

The 2026 Congressional Democratic primary is underway in Virginia’s First District. Seven candidates are running to replace Rob Wittman.

First, read our guide to the VA-01 candidates. Then either head to the polls or make your plan to vote!

What’s the point of a primary?

Let’s talk about primaries. Why do they matter? And what is the power of your individual vote?

Voting is our one core civic responsibility as American citizens. We use our voting superpower to elect representatives of our choosing who will legislate on our behalf and keep our democracy running. It’s our most direct opportunity to participate in our own governance. Here in Virginia, we can flex it every year.

When two or more candidates of the same political party are running for office, a primary is held to determine a nominee. It’s noteworthy that in the U.S., it’s not political parties or national organizations that have the power to nominate candidates — it’s our power as primary voters. To fulfill that responsibility, we need to learn about the candidates and cast a vote for the one who is best aligned with our values and priorities.

In districts with highly partisan maps, primaries matter even more. The relatively low turnout for a primary (compared to a general election) means the primaries tend to hinge upon the most ideologically-driven voters in each party. The outcomes of primaries can shape the trajectory of party platforms, and ultimately even the future of America itself. Our turbulent political climate means the stakes are sky-high. If we don’t show up to vote in a primary, we are allowing our representation to be determined by others who will choose on our behalf, with no consideration of what we care about as individuals.

Know your needs

Imagine standing in front of an ice cream buffet with multiple flavors. Do you base your choice on what the person next to you is going to pick? No; unless you think every flavor is just as good as any other, you base it on your own taste. If you have a peanut allergy, you’re certainly not going to place the same order as the person who gets a peanut butter fudge ice cream cone. If you’re undecided, you can sample the flavors until you find one you like. Not a bad proposition, is it? Choosing a primary candidate operates in a similar way: you base your choice on which candidate appeals the most to you, not anyone else. Their needs for representation are not your needs.

Also, upon discovering that there are lots of ice cream flavors available, you’d never think: “Oh, no, that’s too many choices. What a crowded ice cream buffet! Having choices is bad.” Instead, you’d think: “Yay, having all these options is exactly why I came to this ice cream parlor!”

A strong field of candidates is great for voters. Yes, choosing among them involves some work. We need to juggle information about the candidates, explore the nuanced differences between them, and calculate the risks and benefits of choosing one candidate over the others — especially when their positions on the issues overlap. This process is normal and necessary.

If we forgo our opportunity to vote in a primary, we also forgo the chance to be heard. When it comes to being an informed voter, the “work” of learning the options is a job we’re lucky to have! Essentially, it’s an investment in your future. If you love the idea of, say, affordable healthcare, then a few minutes of your time to learn who will make it happen is well worth the effort.

Have you ever felt like your vote didn’t matter in the face of overwhelming political chaos? You’re not alone. One voter sat out several election cycles because she worried her vote wouldn’t make a difference, until she had a realization:

“If you don’t vote, then you shouldn’t be able to say that you’re mad about what’s going on…That’s what I tell myself, too.”

If you still think your vote doesn’t matter, think again; there are plenty of examples of elections being decided by a small number of votes — or being so close they have to be decided by a coin toss. A single vote seems like such a small thing, but history shows it can have an impact. And of course, we know that a lot of individual votes put together can have a massive impact.

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What to consider… and what not to consider

Primaries are exciting because they give us the chance to pick a candidate who best aligns with our positions, values, and identities. It’s a chance to support your dream candidate (or the person who comes closest). Figure out which candidate excites you the most, and then vote for that person in the primary.

At this stage, we can ignore factors like endorsements, odds of winning, or campaign budget. Why don’t you need to care about these practicalities? Because a vote for the person you really want accomplishes several goals other than potentially getting that person elected.

• First of all, it gives that candidate an accurate sense of how much they’re resonating with voters. So, if they didn’t win this time, they might run again in the future. Conversely, they might not run for office again if their message hasn’t stuck the landing.

• Second, your vote in the primary helps channel important data to the general election. Voting for your dream candidate gives the eventual primary winner a strong sense of voters’ priorities and concerns. A smart primary winner will use that information to their advantage in the general election. This can include platform positions, strategies, and messaging.

Some people believe that if voters don’t all coalesce behind one primary candidate, that represents a loss. But that’s not true, because we can’t “lose” a primary; we’re going to elect a nominee no matter what. We have to remember that a primary is not the general election. Voters are entitled to disagree about who’s the ideal candidate (and ideally, they will — perhaps vociferously!), but this is not the place to compromise our most deeply-held values and priorities. Primaries come with the democratic territory. Compromise and coalition come into play after the primary, when we must throw all our support behind the nominee.

If you’re concerned that your preferred candidate doesn’t have enough money, be assured that after the primary ends, the winner will receive state party funding and a deluge of donations. There are many people who will wait to donate until they know who has won the VA-01 Democratic primary. That gives us our best shot at defeating Rob Wittman.

Voting in this primary means voting for the change we need in VA-01 and beyond. We can say goodbye to Wittman and his self-serving ways, and hello to a new representative who will put VA-01 first.

Now: make your plan to vote!

Why do you think primaries matter? What factors matter most to you when choosing your candidate in this election?

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

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Donald Trump, Rob Wittman, and their cronies insist that America is a hellscape of crime, with cities overrun with “illegals” inflicting all manner of horrors on honest, fearful citizens. This is demonstrably false. Crime in America is falling, fast. The FBI’s 2024 numbers show violent crime down 4.5% and murder down 14.9% — the lowest violent- and property-crime rates since the 1960s. Property crime fell 8.1%, and motor-vehicle theft dropped 18.6%. It’s the second straight year of historic declines, and homicides kept falling into 2025 to the lowest level in a decade. Whatever you’ve been told about a crime “wave,” the data says the opposite.

You might think Rob Wittman has been making VA-01 safer. But he hasn’t – quite the opposite, in fact.

The “Back the Blue” gap

Let’s look at Wittman’s most glaring hypocrisy on crime and public safety. In 2022, he co-sponsored the House Back the Blue Act, a bill that would carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence for the federal crime of assaulting a law-enforcement officer. The bill never became law, though it was reintroduced in several subsequent sessions of Congress.

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants, including more than 600 convicted of assaulting or obstructing police and 170 who used a deadly weapon. About 140 officers were injured that day — beaten with poles and attacked with bear spray in one of the largest mass assaults on police in U.S. history. Trump also freed the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. The Fraternal Order of Police — the nation’s largest police union, which had endorsed Trump three times — joined the national police chiefs’ association in condemning the pardons. Republican senators from Thom Tillis to Susan Collins said the same.

And from Wittman, our Back the Blue co-sponsor? Silence. No statement for the officers. No daylight between him and Trump. A man who wanted mandatory prison time for anyone who lays a hand on a cop went quiet the day his party’s leader handed get-out-of-jail-free cards to hundreds of convicted criminals who did exactly that. And by June 2026, at least 97 of those pardoned had been arrested again on new charges. WTF, Rob?

Defunding the cops — and the victims — he claims to back

The government provides funding to law enforcement agencies nationwide via grants. Three months into the new administration, the Justice Department abruptly cancelled about 365 grants worth roughly $811 million. This was money already promised to police departments, victim services, and crime-prevention programs in red and blue communities across 37 states. More than half a billion dollars came straight out of the office that helps fund local law enforcement, the small and rural departments that are most dependent on federal dollars.

Among the casualties: gun-violence prevention, crime-victim advocacy, domestic-violence shelters, anti-trafficking work, opioid response, and community violence-intervention programs — roughly $169 million for community-safety and violence-reduction work alone. One Minnesota high school lost a grant called “Stop the Violence.” These are the programs the FBI and criminologists credit for the historic drop in crime. Cutting these programs mid-stream, as the murder rate hits a generational low and validates their efficacy, is the opposite of public safety.

The administration called the grants “wasteful.” Wittman, who never tires of claiming to back the blue, didn’t lift a finger to restore a dime, even as the same budget math threatened domestic-violence and victim funding for survivors here in Virginia. Wittman’s “Back the Blue” sloganeering did not, and will never, result in real support for law enforcement officers and crime victims.

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Guns: the votes behind the rhetoric

Wittman calls himself a gun owner and Second Amendment defender, and he’s endorsed by the Russia-linked NRA. Here’s why:

• He voted no on the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which would require a background check on nearly every gun sale.

• He voted no on the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022.

• He voted no on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the post-Uvalde law, backed by major law-enforcement groups, that expanded background checks for buyers under 21, closed the “boyfriend loophole,” and funded the same violence-intervention programs that helped push gun crime down.

The gap between his words and his votes shows plainly. Days after the back-to-back El Paso and Dayton massacres of August 2019, Wittman told constituents he supported strengthening the background-check system — though he’d already voted against two such bills the prior February. And when the Bipartisan Background Checks Act returned to the House floor in 2021, he voted no again. Reassuring words after a tragedy; the NRA vote when it counted. It’s the entire WTF pattern in miniature.

Fentanyl: defunding the cure, then taking the credit

No issue exposes the gap between Wittman’s posture and the actual results like fentanyl. Virginia just posted one of the greatest public-health turnarounds in the country. Opioid-overdose deaths fell 44% from 2023 to 2024 — the steepest drop of any state — and total overdose deaths fell from 1,548 in 2024 to a preliminary 1,196 in 2025. Even Governor Youngkin celebrated a nearly 59% cut in fentanyl deaths since 2022.

What is responsible for the dramatic improvement? Not a Wittman slogan, that’s for sure. It was naloxone in hundreds of thousands of hands, expanded addiction treatment, and — above all — the Medicaid coverage that pays for it. These are the same drivers the CDC credits nationwide. Treatment and harm reduction saved the lives of your neighbors.

So what did Wittman do? He backed the enforcement theater — the HALT Fentanyl Act, the border bill we also mentioned in WTF #5 — then voted for the billionaire-giveaway budget that guts Medicaid, the single largest payer for addiction treatment in America, while the same DOJ purge clawed back opioid-response grants on top of it. Virginia health officials now warn the cuts could reverse the progress and send the death toll climbing again. While portraying the improved situation as a feat of his representation, Wittman is defunding the programs that make the improvements possible.

What it costs VA-01

Strip away the ads and the record is consistent: Rob Wittman votes against the very things that reduce crime — background checks, violence-intervention grants, victim services, Medicaid-funded treatment — and then campaigns on the fear those programs were quietly putting to rest. He could restore the grants, protect addiction treatment, and back universal background checks tomorrow. He won’t — because a frightened, anxious voter is easier to win than a voter who feels safe and protected. Here’s what that costs you:

The next time Wittman tells a sheriff’s association he “backs the blue,” ask him why he was silent on the January 6 pardons, and why he keeps voting to defund the programs that are proven to reduce crime and opioid deaths. You can call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his next staff-only mobile office hours, and remind him whose neighborhoods these are.

The seventh Wittman Truth File will be opened next week.

The Wittman Truth Files (WTF) is a weekly series profiling the gap between Rep. Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record.

If you found this useful, share it with a neighbor and your social channels, and subscribe to get next week’s installment right in your inbox.

• 🌟 On Tuesday we published our shiny, brand-new, one-stop guide to the candidates running to unseat Rob Wittman. Check it out before you vote, and share it with everyone in VA-01!

• 🗳️ Early in-person voting for the VA-01 primary is open, and will continue through August 1. (Election Day is August 4.) You’ll find all the info you need to cast your ballot here.

• Last Thursday we took a look at Wittman’s broken promises on the Chesapeake Bay.

• Our WTF series will resume on Tuesday.

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Our first President, the proud Virginian George Washington, left office in 1796. Since there was no precedent for the office of the American president, Washington had to conceive and embody the nature of the role. In his Farewell Address, he cautioned that political divisions should never overcome national unity:

“...the name of American...must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”

Washington also warned that we must “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism” — in other words, to be watchful of those who wrap themselves in the flag while actually serving other interests.

Washington’s words are particularly powerful because he voluntarily gave up power, handing it to John Adams upon his election by the people. Washington’s warnings came from alarming and dangerous patterns he could already observe in the early American political landscape:

• Self-serving demagogues and faction leaders — who used passionate appeals to national loyalty to inflame public opinion and gather personal power, prioritizing their own ambitions over the country’s needs.

• Foreign manipulation — agents of foreign powers (Britain, France) who would pose as patriots while steering American policy toward their own interests.

• Party spirit masquerading as principle — politicians who claimed their factional agenda was in the national interest, when in fact they were dividing the country for political and personal gain.

Washington thought long and hard about how his actions would set precedent. He fulfilled the demands of his office based on his belief that genuine patriotism was quiet, steady, and self-sacrificial, and that the president should subordinate personal and party interests to the common good. In his Farewell Address, Washington warned that “pretended” love of country, cloaked in the language of patriotism, was the inversion of his beliefs: loud, self-serving, using the language of love of country as a tool of manipulation.

Washington didn’t distrust patriotism itself, only its counterfeits. Modern research has validated him.

Blind and constructive patriotism

In 1999 Robert Schatz, Ervin Staub, and Howard Lavine authored a study examining different concepts of patriotism. They noted that there’s a difference between “blind patriotism” and “constructive patriotism.” (The notion of blind vs. constructive patriotism isn’t immune to criticism, and is clearly not the only lens through which we can consider this idea. But it’s useful for describing what patriotism can mean in different groups and different contexts, as well as the implications attached to its symbolism.)

Blind patriotism

• Characterized by:

  • Unquestioning positive evaluation

  • Staunch allegiance

  • Intolerance of criticism

• Associated with:

  • Political disengagement

  • Nationalism

  • Perceptions of foreign threat

  • Placing outsized importance on demonstrations of patriotic behavior

Constructive patriotism

• Characterized by:

  • Support for questioning

  • Criticism of current group practices that are intended to result in positive change

• Associated with:

  • Political involvement

  • Political interest, knowledge, and behavior

In other words, people who question the country tend to be the most engaged citizens, while the loudest symbolic patriots tend to be the least engaged.

“Blind patriots” tend to revel in “glorification” – a feeling of ingroup superiority, respect for the group’s central symbols and rules, and antagonism toward those who do not show enough respect or otherwise criticize the country. The “flag-wrappers” tend to hand over decision-making to their leaders, without engaging in critical thinking. Glorification creates a receptive audience for demagogic patriotic appeals, and demagogues weaponize national symbols in service of their agenda.

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Symbols as strategy

Nationalism requires deciding who truly belongs to a nation and who doesn’t. It encourages exclusionary, prejudiced attitudes and policies toward anyone within a country’s borders who is identified as “other,” creating hierarchies of citizenship that marginalize minorities, immigrants, and anyone who doesn’t fit the dominant cultural template at any given time. In America, this has historically meant that being “truly American” has been defined in ways that exclude Black Americans, Native Americans, Catholics, and Jews, among others, regardless of their legal status. Nationalism breaks relationships with other countries and destabilizes global politics by prioritizing power at the expense of stability, morality, and mutual benefit.

The Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank, not a left-wing source) says that nationalism operates at odds with America’s founding principles and institutions. Stoking the nationalist passions of the majority group in a democratic society creates a potent threat, since the majority can cause harm by abusing power. (Does this sound at all familiar?)

A wave of patriotic pride is not necessarily synonymous with nationalist fervor. For example, if U.S. athletes excel in the Olympic Games, a swell of national celebration, including flag-waving, is likely to follow . But in other circumstances, politicians deploy flags and symbols to activate in blind patriots a pre-loaded psychological package of nationalism.

This is a strategy, not an accident. A demagogue’s manipulation of national pride is central to their goals: define the nation narrowly so that only certain people count as “real” patriots, then paint opponents as enemies of the nation instead of legitimate political rivals. This is why Trump and his associates say Democrats are “evil” or “traitors” or must be “locked up.”

Ultimately, the people most likely to be manipulated by patriotic appeals are “blind patriots” — not engaged, critically-minded citizens who tend toward constructive patriotism.

Our nation has many symbols of national pride and identity: the Stars & Stripes, Lady Liberty, Uncle Sam, the bald eagle. The power of these symbols is that they evoke emotions that unify and resonate with us. We see them on battlefields, in high schools, at stadiums, on houses of worship, and atop our capitol buildings. We sing the national anthem with our hands over our hearts. Every American is entitled to have pride in these symbols, but many “constructive patriots” hesitate to display them precisely because they don’t want to be mistaken as “blind patriots” with all of the accompanying baggage. A recent survey illustrates the effect:

And yet, for some Black Americans, like Mr. Jerry Esters in Detroit, the flag represents a heroic history where justice has prevailed. He speaks of Moriah Martin, his great-great-grandmother who was born into slavery:

When we hesitate to embrace and safeguard our national symbols, the nationalist demagogues win; we allow them to use and abuse our shared symbols however they wish, including changing their meaning or rejecting it outright. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX22) demonstrated exactly this with comments about the Statue of Liberty:

We cannot allow this to go unchallenged.

It can be hard to embrace national symbols when we feel misaligned with the direction of the country, or when we have grave issues with its current leadership and agenda. But using these symbols doesn’t have to suggest agreement or satisfaction. Instead, our American iconography can remind us of the promise of what this country can and will be, and serve as a symbol of our own commitment to working toward those goals.

Wittman’s blind patriotism desecrates the symbols he professes to love

Rob Wittman loves to wrap himself in the flag. His national defense page frames military advocacy in sweeping terms: “We are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history; we must decide if the United States will retain its global primacy, or if we will concede our position to the malign intent of Communist China.” This kind of language is a classic flag-wrapping technique, making ordinary appropriations debates sound like existential battles for the American soul.

On January 6, 2021, Wittman showed his true colors. Wittman was one of the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election. He voted against certifying Pennsylvania’s electors — despite no substantive evidence of voter fraud — after the U.S. Capitol was breached by Trump supporters, in a stunningly treasonous attack.

What’s more, Wittman co-sponsored a bill called the “Back the Blue Act” to ensure mandatory minimum sentences for assaulting an officer. Then, when Trump pardoned 1,500 January 6 defendants (600+ who assaulted police, and 170 who used weapons) over the condemnation of the Fraternal Order of Police and many Senate Republicans, Wittman was silent. Silent! Yet he routinely invokes constitutional democracy and the sacrifices made to protect it. The hypocrisy is off the charts.

Rob Wittman is a stark example of George Washington’s warning of “pretended patriotism”: he uses the language of American institutions while acting against them.

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That Star Spangled Banner yet waves

Wittman Watch exists to hold Rob Wittman to account, to demand that he do better. It comes from our conviction that our district, state, and country can always be better. That’s probably why you are reading this right now. Like us, you tend toward constructive patriotism. And it’s time to reassert our shared rights to the symbols of our nation, and ensure they are not specifically associated with the flag-wrapping nationalism of the Trump administration and its enablers.

As Abraham Lincoln said at the battlefield and burial grounds of Gettysburg:

We must not surrender the symbols of this nation we love to those who seek to appropriate them for their own purposes. Instead, we must passionately claim and embrace those symbols.

This is not a matter of being a Democratic or Republican voter, being on Team Red or Team Blue. America has been built by members of both parties, extinct parties, and no party. On America’s birthday — and every day — our symbols belong to all of us. They should serve to unite us, not divide us. Anyone who claims exclusive domain over them is a tyrant, and should be rejected by true, constructive American patriots.

The American project will never be finished. And, as long as we continue to commit to making ourselves and our country ever “more perfect,” neither are we.

Happy 4th of July, VA-01! And happy 250th birthday, America!

Fly the flag. 🇺🇸

The Wittman Watch Store has a few items especially for patriots! The QR codes point to our website. (We make $0 on every sale.)

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

We published our first comparison of the candidates running to unseat Rob Wittman on May 12, and made minor updates in early June. Since then, we’ve heard a lot more from our candidates and they’ve expanded their platforms. We’ve read every campaign website. We scrolled their social media. And we’ve compiled everything in one place for you, right here.

This fully updated comparison is your one-stop shop for all you need to know about the candidates.

We’ve also created a page to collect the candidates’ notable media appearances. Check that out here:

The good news for VA-01 voters is that we have real choices. Each of the seven Democratic candidates brings different priorities, different experience, and different ideas about how to represent us.

What they have in common

Across the seven challengers, the consensus is broad. They all want to:

• Lower prescription drug prices.

• Protect Medicaid.

• Require billionaires and large corporations to pay higher effective tax rates than teachers and firefighters currently do.

• Protect reproductive rights in federal law.

• Ensure the long-term viability of rural hospitals (most specifically Rappahannock General) that are at risk because of the cuts Wittman enthusiastically supported.

• Get big money out of politics, from banning Congressional stock trading to refusing corporate PAC money.

• Address corruption among elected officials in government.

The candidates’ differences are in approach, background, and emphasis. Below is a comparison built around the issues voters care about most.

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The comparison

First, here are three tables (each with three issues) that show the candidates’ approaches. The issues are ordered by voters’ priority, and Rob Wittman’s perspective on each is included to help you compare the incumbent against his opponents.

Get to know the candidates

Now let’s review who each candidate is, and what each emphasizes:

Elizabeth Dempsey Beggs — Army veteran and former Tank Commander, foster parent, mother of four, William & Mary MBA student.

• Centerpiece: a “New Deal Democrat” platform of family stability, affordable childcare, public schools, veterans’ care, and reproductive rights.

• Distinctive: foster youth advocacy and military-family TRICARE focus, paired with a “treat people the way you want to be treated” framing aimed at rural and crossover voters.

Salaam Bhatti — public-interest attorney, child of immigrants who relied on WIC and free school meals.

• Centerpiece: Medicare for All, tax billionaires, restore trust in government.

• Distinctive: a broad, detailed issues platform that now spans replacing ICE with a due-process-based system, breaking up agribusiness monopolies, and restoring Congress’s war powers — including withholding funding from Israel over the war in Gaza.

Tim Cywinski — community organizer, Sierra Club communications director. Calls himself a “Reformist Democrat.”

• Centerpiece: the “Fair Shot Agenda” of campaign finance reform, $500 “Democracy Dollars” for every citizen, and lower middle-class taxes.

• Distinctive: the only candidate making Big Tech data center build-out a flagship issue, with detailed proposals to stop projects from raising your electric bill or draining water supplies. His refreshed platform now states plainly that the end goal of his healthcare plan is Medicare for All, reached by way of a public option.

Jason Knapp — 21-year Navy F/A-18 pilot, NATO officer, grew up on SNAP and Medicaid.

• Centerpiece: restoring government accountability and pushing back against political corruption, prioritizing mission effectiveness and responsibility over self-interest

• Distinctive: a concrete anti-corruption plan (stock-trading ban, blind trust, four-term self-limit) and an ACA-centered healthcare fix.

Ericka Kopp — healthcare attorney, caregiver to her disabled veteran husband, biracial, bisexual and bilingual.

• Centerpiece: a comprehensive universal healthcare system funded by taxing the wealthy and closing corporate tax loopholes, and holding officials constitutionally accountable to ordinary people rather than corporations and lobbyists.

• Distinctive: has the most progressive platform in the field, including a Green New Deal, universal childcare, universal public education through trade school, abolishing ICE, releasing the full Epstein files, raising the minimum wage to $30/hour, and impeaching Trump on day one.

Shannon Taylor — currently three-term Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney, first woman elected to that office, with a 90% homicide conviction rate.

• Centerpiece: prosecutorial credibility, protect Medicaid, lower costs, defend reproductive freedom, hold Wittman/Trump accountable.

• Distinctive: a new “Serve the People First” agenda built entirely around ethics and anti-corruption — banning Congressional stock trading, a lifetime lobbying ban, overturning Citizens United, mandatory jail time for politicians who steal taxpayer funds, and a 12-year term-limit pledge she says she’ll keep whether or not it passes.

Mel Tull — Army veteran and business attorney, former Henrico Democrats treasurer, Fortune 500 corporate counsel turned small-firm practitioner.

• Centerpiece: deliver practical, bipartisan policy solutions to lower the cost of living, protect healthcare and retirement programs, and reduce the federal deficit

• Distinctive: the most centrist framing in the field, including an “all of the above” energy approach and explicit emphasis on bipartisan cooperation and winning over moderate, rural, and independent voters.

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Wittman’s platform has not changed

While his official House website has changed design, Rob Wittman’s campaign website has stayed exactly the same. We’ve documented exactly how he continues to fail VA-01, and a new website has presented the facts so voters can draw conclusions for themselves: RobsRecord.com. We won’t belabor Wittman’s record here. Suffice to say that, among many other things, he’s failed us on affordability, jobs and the economy, healthcare, immigration, and protecting the Constitution. For more, look at Rob’s Record and review our archive.

What’s at stake

VA-01 is now the nation’s “bellwether” race: our district represents the middle of all races across the country. If VA-01 flips Blue — if Rob Wittman loses — it’s likely the Democrats will win a majority in the House. The most recent polling of VA-01 (from a Republican firm in April 2026) showed Trump underwater in the district at 42% favorable, 50% unfavorable. Wittman himself registered just 35% favorable. Polls show that 20% of voters in VA-01 have no opinion on Wittman, and 23% don’t know who he is. How is that even possible after 19 years in office? In a head-to-head matchup (against Shannon Taylor, whom the Republican pollsters chose for their study) earlier in the campaign, the race polled dead even. Since that poll, Trump’s star has fallen even further; Wittman is joined to him at the hip, given his record of voting with Trump 100% of the time.

A Democrat can win the VA-01 race. Whichever Democrat emerges from the primary on August 4 will face a vulnerable Rob Wittman in a district that’s tilting away from him. In 19 years, he’s never had to compete for our seat like this. He’s not prepared for it. His lies are catching up with him. More and more of us see what Wittman has become: a silently complicit MAGA politician who serves wealthy donors and sells our rights, liberties, and opportunities to satisfy them.

We don’t have to suffer more years of this. America can’t afford to suffer the likes of Wittman. The choice you make in the primary matters.

Read the candidates’ websites. Follow them on your favorite platforms. Show up at candidate forums. Ask them questions. They are running to represent you.

Pick your candidate, vote in the primary, and vote for the nominee in November. We can’t afford Rob Wittman!

Tell us your thoughts about the candidate field in the comments.

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

This page contains links to candidate forums, interviews, podcasts, and articles about the candidates. As new interviews and articles emerge, we’ll keep this as current as possible; let us know if you notice that something is missing.

Candidate contact information

Videos of candidate forums

• June 28 - Henrico Dems 2026 Candidate Forum: Virginia’s First Congressional District
  Candidates: Beggs, Bhatti, Cywinski, Knapp, Kopp, Taylor, Tull

• June 19 - Candidate Forum: Virginia’s 1st Congressional District
  Candidates: Beggs, Bhatti, Cywinski, Taylor

• June 6 - 2026 Williamsburg JCC CD-01 Candidate Forum
  Candidates: Beggs, Bhatti, Cywinski, Knapp, Kopp, Tull

• June 4 - Virginia’s 1st Congressional District Democratic Candidate Forum via Gloucester VA Democrats
  Candidates: Beggs, Bhatti, Cywinski, Knapp, Kopp, Tull

• January 15 - Speed Dating District 1 Candidates via Historic Triangle Dems
  Candidates: Beggs, Bhatti, Cywinski, Knapp, Kopp, Littlepage, Taylor, Tull
  (Note: Lewis Littlepage has since dropped out of the race)

Neighbors for Change candidate interviews

(Note: Lewis Littlepage dropped out of the race after the third round of interviews; Shannon Taylor declined to participate.)

• In Their Own Words: CD1 Candidates (3/24)

• In Their Own Words: Legislative Agenda (4/6)

• In Their Own Words: What Truly Differentiates Me (4/27)

• In Their Own Words: What Keeps Me Going (5/18)

• In Their Own Words: Endorsements (5/18)

• In Their Own Words: Bi-Partisan Collaboration (5/18)

• In Their Own Words: Congressional Authority Over War Powers (5/18)

Media appearances

The candidates have been interviewed across print media, video, and podcasts. Here we collect their appearances, in reverse chronological order.

Elizabeth Dempsey Beggs

• Foggy Bottom Line podcast (6/19)

• Virginia Scope podcast (6/2)

• Breaking the Meta Podcast (2/20)

• The Seneca Project podcast (2/5)

• Breaking The Meta Podcast (1/15)

• ABC News (1/12)

Salaam Bhatti

• Alex Cascio podcast (6/24)

• Foggy Bottom Line podcast (6/10)

• Virginia Scope podcast (5/28)

• Banner & Backbone podcast (5/21)

• RVA Magazine (5/10)

• Walter Rhein podcast (4/2)

Tim Cywinski

• Lorena Serantes podcast (6/25)

• Foggy Bottom Line podcast (6/19)

• Kate Powell podcast (5/12)

• RVA Magazine (part 1) (4/1), (part 2) (4/27)

• Left Out Loud Podcast (3/10)

• Tim Cywinski via Style Weekly (11/8/25)

Jason Knapp

• Foggy Bottom Line podcast (6/4)

• Henrico Citizen (11/20/25)

Ericka Kopp

• Foggy Bottom Line podcast (6/18)

• Miss Immigrant USA podcast (6/18)

• Ericka Kopp via Lejune Magazine (6/4)

• Carlos R. Gomez of Coconut Justice Podcast (5/28)

• Chelsea Yigan of Political Makeup podcast (5/12)

Shannon Taylor

• Lauren Underwood podcast (6/3)

• Virginia Scope podcast (5/21)

• Simon Rosenberg podcast (4/13)

• Virginia Mercury (9/8/25)

Mel Tull

• Foggy Bottom Line podcast (4/29)

Know about any candidate coverage we missed? What else would you like to learn about them? Let us know by sending us a message or drop a comment here or on any of our social media channels: BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

• 🗳️ Early in-person voting for the VA-01 primary is open, and will continue through August 1. (Election Day is August 4.) You’ll find all the info you need to cast your ballot here.

• 🧢 Check out the Wittman Watch store for hats, shirts, yard flags, and accessories that let you show you’re a Wittman Watcher, and share a QR code to our site. As usual, we make $0 — it’s just a stylish, fun way to get friends and neighbors to watch Wittman with you.

• Last Thursday we took a look at Wittman’s broken promises on energy.

• On Tuesday we opened the Wittman Truth File on immigration. WTFs are great for sharing with friends, neighbors, and anyone you know who might benefit from never voting for Wittman again. (That would be everyone.)

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Rob Wittman portrays himself as an expert on the Chesapeake Bay. He earned a Ph.D. and reportedly wrote a 532-page dissertation on what makes shellfish programs work. His own son is a waterman who works in the Bay. Wittman grew up in the Chesapeake watershed, and has built nearly two decades of campaign branding around being the Bay’s man in Washington.

So why has Rob Wittman never once promised to do anything for the people who make their living on the Bay? Since his first campaign in 2007, Wittman’s campaign platforms have never mentioned our watermen, oyster growers, crabbers, aquaculture farmers, processors, or seafood houses. We read every Bay-related pledge he’s ever published and the words “waterman,” “oyster,” “crab,” “aquaculture,” “menhaden,” and “seafood industry” appear a combined ZERO times. The man whose son works on the water campaigned, cycle after cycle, as if the people who make their living on the Bay don’t exist.

Campaign promises aside, what has Wittman attempted or delivered for the health of the Bay and the livelihood of the people who work there? Nothing.

But one metric stands out: after Wittman’s 19 years in office, the Bay’s health is worse than before he started.

His recreation over our livelihoods

Virginia’s seafood industry delivers a $1.1 billion boost to the state economy, supports more than 7,100 jobs, and generates over $168 million in labor income. Virginia ranks number one on the East Coast for oyster production and first on the Atlantic Coast for seafood landings, with landings worth more than $200 million in 2020. Roughly 6,000 Virginians work on the water, including some 2,866 licensed watermen – including Wittman’s own son.

A huge share of that economy lives in VA-01. The Northern Neck, the Middle Peninsula, the rivers feeding the Bay — these are Wittman’s district. When he talks, as he so often does, about the Bay as an “economic driver,” he is describing the work of people to whom he has never shown support.

Compare that silence to what he does promise. His platforms find room for the recreational version of the Bay — for “hunting, fishing, and enjoying the natural beauty” (his own hobby, evidenced by the dead fish that adorn his DC office’s walls), for “tourists, sportsmen and women, and conservationists.” The Bay as a place to play, yes. The Bay as a place to work? Not a word.

The fight in his own backyard

Want to see what that silence costs? Look at Reedville, on the far tip of the Northern Neck — squarely in VA-01.

Reedville is home to Omega Protein, now a subsidiary of the Canadian conglomerate Cooke Inc., which runs the East Coast’s last industrial menhaden “reduction” fishery — grinding the small, ecologically critical fish into meal and oil. For years this has been the single most explosive Bay-industry fight in Virginia. One one side: jobs in a rural town. On the other side: the Bay’s small-scale watermen, along with the health of the Bay’s food web, including striped bass and ospreys.

Experts who monitor the health of the Bay are sounding alarms. Menhaden (the fish the small independent watermen rely on) are part of a food pyramid that, because of overfishing, may be collapsing. Virginia’s reported menhaden bait harvest collapsed from 5.4 million pounds in 2019 to under 1 million in 2024, even as the industrial reduction fleet kept pulling out over 100 million pounds a year. An overwhelming 92 percent of Virginia voters, across both parties, want more menhaden left in the Bay. Studies are urgently needed to examine exactly what’s happening to the menhaden population. Livelihoods are at stake.

This is happening in Wittman’s district, to his constituents, over a fish that sits at the center of the Bay’s food web. The congressman wrote a shellfish dissertation and has a waterman son, but his platforms are strangely silent on the issue. You will not find menhaden, Omega Protein, Reedville, or the reduction fishery anywhere in 19 years of his stated Bay agenda.

Wittman’s silence is a choice. And it is a choice that leaves both the workers and the Bay without their most credentialed and potentially most powerful advocate.

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One law, zero reduction in pollution

So what did Wittman promise on the Bay — and did he deliver it?

For fifteen years, essentially his entire Bay platform has rested on a single piece of legislation: the Chesapeake Bay Accountability and Recovery Act. He first introduced a version in 2009, and a companion bill finally became law in December 2014, passing the House 416–0. We must give credit where it is due; that is a real, bipartisan law with Wittman’s name on it, and passing anything 416–0 in Washington is no small thing.

But read the fine print his own press shop will never highlight. CBARA is a budget-transparency measure. It requires the federal government to publish a “crosscut budget” tracking Bay spending across agencies, and it created an Independent Evaluator to report to Congress. That is all it does. It does not reduce a single pound of nitrogen. It does not cap a single ton of phosphorus. It does not plant one oyster or restore one acre of grass. It is accountability about the funding of the cleanup — not the cleanup itself.

For 19 years, “I cleaned up the Bay” has been the implied promise of the legislation he supported. The real deliverable was a spreadsheet.

The scorecard he doesn’t want you to read

As for the Bay itself: here is where the gap between the branding and the reality becomes impossible to ignore.

In June 2025, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science graded the Chesapeake Bay a “C” (50 percent), down from a C+ the year before. Eleven of 15 monitored regions showed declining water quality.

Worse still, 2025 was the deadline (established back in 2010) by which the Bay states were supposed to have their pollution cleaned up. But they blew it, for the THIRD time. Reductions in nitrogen — the pollutant that matters most — reached just 59 percent of the target. In December 2025, regional leaders quietly punted the finish line to 2040.

We should note two things. First, the long-term trend on nitrogen pollution is gently upward, thanks largely to wastewater-plant upgrades and climate change (which, incidentally, Wittman has studiously avoided talking about while also consistently supporting fossil fuel providers). Second, no single member of Congress controls a six-state, 1,000-locality cleanup.

But “the Bay is improving slowly and has missed every deadline” is not what the “CHAMPION OF THE CHESAPEAKE” was supposed to deliver over his 19 years in office. Wittman has been in office for the entire arc of the 2010 cleanup plan, from launch to failure. The health of the Bay he was elected to save has worsened.

What’s more, Wittman voted for measures that have created the Bay’s worsening conditions. Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay. The Inflation Reduction Act (H. R. 5376) of 2022 included funds to help farmers mitigate the runoff of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. This is important: for example, nitrogen is the pollutant most responsible for the Bay’s core ailment. Excess nitrogen feeds the algae blooms that decompose and create the low-oxygen “dead zones” that kill fish, crabs, and underwater grasses. Controlling that will help the Bay recover. Wittman voted against it.

The bill passed anyway (thanks to a Democratic Party majority) and was signed into law, and conservation funding began reaching farmers in 2023, with Bay-watershed states like Virginia among the beneficiaries. Then, in July 2025, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (H. R. 1) that Wittman supported rescinded remaining funds, folded a reduced amount into the USDA budget, and dropped the climate and nutrient-reduction targeting language entirely.

So here’s the short story: Wittman voted against conservation funding for the Bay in 2023; it passed anyway thanks to the Democratic majority in the House; and three years later Wittman voted to cut the remaining funds and remove conservation provisions completely.

Rob Wittman worked to remove conservation funding for the Bay, and succeeded.

He cares more about your vote than the Bay

The Bay’s health is under further threat, and Wittman is at the center of it. The Trump administration is considering opening up waters on Virginia’s coast for commercial seabed mining, to include 2,500 square miles just north of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The proposed operations would churn up the seabed to extract minerals, with impacts to: commercial fisheries and the coastal economy (fish, crab, oyster, clam, and scallop populations); wildlife and their habitats (dolphins, sea turtles, migratory whales, shellfish); coastal resilience and shoreline stability (including storm surges and coastal erosion); and military and space operations (submarines, space flight launches).

In December 2023, Wittman sent a letter to DOD promoting the expansion of deep-sea mining which, he said, would help the US obtain minerals for which we would otherwise be reliant on China. The letter was co-signed by 31 Republican members of Congress. This was not a bipartisan effort or anything approaching a broad consensus; Republican members of Congress, Secretary Howard Lutnick, and others are pushing to allow deep-sea mining, under the pretense of “national security” and certainly to support private profit from our limited, fragile natural resources. And Rob Wittman is at the vanguard of that effort.

So ask yourself this: if Wittman was truly concerned about the health of the Bay, the livelihoods of those who make their living from it, or the wildlife that relies upon it, would he proudly lead a partisan effort to open the Bay up to deep-sea mining operations that will inevitably damage the critical natural resource that so many in our district rely upon? Would he vote against conservation funding for the Bay, twice?

No, he would not. For Rob Wittman, the Bay is simply another lever he can pull to feign effectiveness and win your vote. He may say he cares about the Bay, but his actions show otherwise.

Where he showed up, and where he didn’t

To be clear about his record: Wittman has defended Bay funding. When President Trump tried to zero out the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program in 2017 and again in 2025, the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force co-chairs — Wittman, Bobby Scott (D, VA-03), Sarah Elfreth (D, MD-03), and Andy Harris (R, MD-01) — pushed back, helping to secure $93 million for the program in the 2026 budget.

But defending the budget of a program that is missing its targets is not the same as restoring the Bay. And keeping the lights on at the Bay Program does nothing for the Reedville waterman watching his menhaden harvest collapse, or the oyster grower fighting for reef acreage.

What a real Bay champion would have promised (and delivered)

Here is the maddening part: the tools were right there for Wittman to use. A congressman with Wittman’s expertise and committee seats could have made concrete, deliverable promises to the Bay’s workers and industries — but he never did.

Wittman did none of these. But we know he could have, because someone has: Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) got $2.5 million for Bay menhaden studies inserted into the 2026 partial appropriations package passed in February. Why did it take a Democratic Senator from Maryland to get this done?

Wittman didn’t even try.

The accountability gap

Rob Wittman delivered a transparency law and a sustained defense of Bay funding — genuine, if modest, accomplishments. But on the two things his 19-year brand actually promised — a healthier Bay and a secure future for it — the water tells the story: degraded health, a third blown deadline, and a finish line shoved out to 2040.

And as for the people of the Bay — the watermen, the oyster growers, the seafood families who are this district’s economy — Wittman has not made any sincere attempt to serve their needs.

The Bay’s most credentialed defender has chosen again and again to abdicate his responsibility to the people who make their living from the Bay, and to let the Bay’s health degrade. We deserve a representative who fights for the water and the people who work it.

Read his record yourself — the Chesapeake Bay report card is public, the bills are public. And if you ever see Wittman, ask him the question he’s avoided for 19 years: Congressman, what’s your responsibility to the Bay and its watermen, and how are you living up to it?

To get the full picture on Rob Wittman, subscribe to this Substack (two emails a week, and we’ll never bombard your inbox about anything else) and any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

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Drive around the First District and you’ll find an economy that runs on immigrant labor. The crab- and oyster-picking houses of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula can’t operate without the seasonal workers who arrive on H-2B visas. Farms run on H-2A crews. Rural hospitals already on the brink — the same ones we profiled in WTF #3 — lean on foreign-born doctors and nurses. Virginia is home to more than a million immigrants, about 12.5% of the state; most of them are naturalized citizens. Even undocumented Virginians pay an estimated $689.8 million a year in state and local taxes, at a higher effective rate (7.9%) than the state’s top 1% of households (7.2%). And contrary to intentionally false news reports, native-born citizens commit crimes at a higher rate than immigrants.

Rob Wittman knows all of this. But he has decided that frightening you about your neighbors is worth more than telling you the truth, or backing policies that would make the whole First District more prosperous.

The fix he helped kill

Here’s the fact that gives away the whole game. In 2023–24, a bipartisan trio of senators spent four months negotiating the most conservative border-security deal in 40 years: tougher asylum standards; thousands of new Border Patrol agents and asylum officers; fentanyl detection at ports of entry; and authority to close the border when crossings spiked. The Border Patrol union endorsed it. President Biden pledged to sign it.

Then Donald Trump told Republicans to kill it, because he wanted border chaos for his run against Biden. Speaker Mike Johnson declared the bill dead on arrival; one of the deal’s authors said his own party found the bill too effective to support.

Where was Wittman? Silent and compliant. He didn’t break with leadership, didn’t push for a vote, didn’t offer a House companion bill. If he believed his own talk of an immigration “crisis,” he’d have spoken out against Trump’s demands to kill the Senate bill. He did not — because a broken border is only useful to him if it stays broken. And that’s what this WTF reveals: stoking voters’ fears about immigration is Wittman’s chosen strategy. While he very deliberately kept Trump’s chosen wedge issue alive, the real problems — including the visa backlogs choking the seafood houses and farms back home — have been left to fester.

The legal immigration he claims to champion — and then votes against

To hear him tell it, Wittman understands the issue. He’s worked with Senators Warner and Kaine to organize more H-2B visas for Virginia’s seafood houses, and at a 2024 Gloucester roundtable he said Congress should allow more legal immigration and fix the visa laws, warning against making “perfect the enemy of the good.” His own issues page even opens with “America was built by immigrants.”

Then comes the pivot to fear, and the votes that erase the line between legal and illegal entirely. On July 3, 2025, Wittman voted for H. R. 1, the billionaire giveaway that shows us precisely who Wittman is. The bill includes the first-ever fee just to apply for asylum ($100, plus $100 for every year a case waits), a $550 fee for the work permit, a new $250 fee on nearly every non-immigrant visa — including the ones his seafood and farm employers use — and the end of hardship waivers. That’s a massive tax on doing immigration the legal way, for both the individuals applying and the employers who desperately need them.

Two months later, the Wittman-backed administration imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, which threatens staffing at rural hospitals like the already-teetering Tappahannock and Farmville facilities. Meanwhile, the actual fix never comes: the H-2B cap has been frozen at 66,000 since 1997, and when a bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act was reintroduced in 2025 to stabilize farm labor, Wittman didn’t put his name on it.

The damage is already in the fields. After the administration reversed its own farm-enforcement carve-out, national farm employment fell by 155,000 workers between March and July 2025. This strangulation of legal immigration shrinks the labor force by about 1.7 million workers. The consequence is that everything costs more to produce. Who pays for that? You do. The average family will pay roughly $2,150 more per year for food, housing, and services by 2028. The bill lands on all of us. WTF, Rob?

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The door slammed on refugees, asylum seekers, and migrant children

Refugees and asylum seekers flee their homes to escape war, political oppression, religious persecution, or natural disasters. Refugees are not illegal immigrants; they are granted legal protection under international law. Their entry into the country must be and is controlled. But a common complaint against the refugee/asylum system is that individuals may inappropriately claim refugee status to sidestep immigration enforcement and gain access to the country. To the extent that this is even measurable, the numbers are extremely low: a GAO review found USCIS terminated asylum for fraud in just 0.5% of cases (just 374 people from 76,122) from 2010 through 2014.

Wittman says enforcement of immigration laws must always be carried out “humanely... and consistent with due process.” The administration set the 2026 refugee ceiling at 7,500 — the lowest in the program’s history, down from 125,000 the year before and even below the roughly 95,000 average that both parties have long honored. The Trump administration reserved most of those 7,500 slots specifically for white South Africans, while turning away families fleeing violence in Sudan and Afghanistan. And remember, Wittman helped kill the bipartisan deal that would have added more asylum officers, accelerated asylum/refugee decisions, and set a higher screening bar that would have largely addressed the concerns about misuse of the asylum/refugee system.

The bill Wittman voted for also gutted long-standing limits on detaining migrant children and opened the door to indefinite family detention.

“Humanely” and “due process” are scarcely to be found in any of these policies.

The $170 billion machine and its performative enforcement

In January 2025, Wittman voted for the Laken Riley Act, which mandates detention based on an arrest or accusation, even without a conviction. Civil liberties groups across the spectrum opposed the bill for stripping basic due process, a cornerstone of U.S. Constitutional law. Then, in H. R. 1, Wittman voted to pour roughly $170 billion into immigration enforcement — more than the budgets of every state and local police force in America combined — toward a goal of a million deportations a year, with no specifications for how the money must be spent and almost no oversight.

When Wittman sows fear about immigration, this is the agenda he’s selling. And it doesn’t look like law enforcement. It looks like a performance: masked agents grabbing people at courthouses when they follow the law and show up for their own hearings; sweeping up green-card and visa holders; and ignoring due process for the sake of camera footage.

None of this makes economic sense. Independent analyses say mass deportation at this scale could shrink our GDP by 4 to 7 percent and push prices up by as much as 9 percent by 2028. And the workers being hunted are active contributors to America’s coffers. They paid nearly $100 billion in taxes in 2022, including $25.7 billion into a Social Security system from which they’re ineligible to collect — the same trust fund that Wittman’s votes are draining (see WTF #4). The Congressional Budget Office estimates the administration’s immigration crackdown will add roughly $500 billion to the deficit over a decade, mostly from the tax revenue those workers stop paying in.

Wittman’s votes on immigration are wasteful, dangerous, and self-defeating — which is fine by him, because his goal (like Trump’s) is never to fix immigration but to capitalize on it.

Fear over facts, politics over people

Wittman’s cynical exploitation of immigration as a campaign issue became crystal clear in March 2026. After a Fairfax County mother was killed by an undocumented immigrant, Wittman joined a statement blaming Governor Spanberger for narrowing the 287(g) program — ignoring the fact that the killer had a 2020 deportation order ICE never acted on, even under Governor Youngkin, and that Spanberger’s policy does indeed cooperate with federal authorities on valid judicial warrants. He used a family’s grief as a campaign prop. It’s the same move as his years-old radio claim that migrants were getting free smartphones (they were stripped-down ICE tracking devices): tell the inflammatory lie, skip the truth.

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So here’s what it means for you:

Wittman could fix much of this. He could back a House version of the bipartisan deal, modernize the seafood and farm visas, and demand oversight of ICE. He won’t, because stoking fear works in his favor.

The next time Wittman tells a seafood association he’s fighting for their workers, they should ask him why he let the fix die and won’t sign the bill. You can call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his next staff-only mobile office hours, and remind him whose neighbors — and whose livelihoods — these are.

The sixth Wittman Truth File will be opened next week.

The Wittman Truth Files (WTF) is a weekly series profiling the gap between Rep. Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record.

If you found this useful, share it with a neighbor and your social channels, and subscribe to get next week’s installment right in your inbox.

• Early in-person voting for the VA-01 primary is open, and will go through August 1. You’ll find all the info you need to cast your ballot here.

• 📣 Special announcement! Our community of Wittman Watchers has asked for ways to spread the word about Wittman. Sharing our content and newsletter are great — and now you can do it in style! Check out the Wittman Watch store for hats, shirts, yard flags, and accessories that let you show you’re a Wittman Watcher, and share a QR code to our site. As usual, we make $0 — it’s just a stylish, fun way to get friends and neighbors to watch Wittman with you.

• Last Thursday we took a look at Rob Wittman and the seven deadly sins. If he can’t do good, at least he should do better.

• On Tuesday we opened the Wittman Truth File on earned benefits. WTFs are great for sharing with friends, neighbors, and anyone you know who might benefit from never voting for Wittman again. (That would be everyone.)

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Since Rob Wittman first ran for Congress in December 2007, he has included energy policy in his campaign platform. For 19 years, he has promised VA-01 energy abundance and independence—but did he deliver on it? Are we best served by continued reliance on fossil fuels, or has Wittman sabotaged our ability to benefit from renewable energies like wind and solar?

Archived pages on the Wayback Machine (via Internet Archive) of Wittman’s campaign websites plus his actual legislative record reveal his story of campaign energy promises in three distinct acts:

• The National Security Era (2007–2016) – Wittman framed America’s oil dependence as a terrorism problem requiring urgent action

• The Silent Era (2018) – Blink and you’ll miss his scant energy policy

• The Clean Energy Rebrand (2020–2024) – Previous energy policy commitments returned dressed up in new vocabulary such as “innovation,” “carbon capture,” and “greenhouse gas emissions”

We now present Wittman’s campaign pledges to deliver energy independence and abundance, along with the themes and patterns that shaped his pledges over time. This is the record as Wittman himself presented it.

2007 — Terrorism, oil, and vague solutions

Wittman framed America’s energy dependence as a national security crisis. For context, oil was climbing toward $100 a barrel during the Iraq War. Terrorism made for politically strategic messaging. Under “Working for Energy Independence,” he declared that protecting national security and energy independence are linked. America’s dependence on foreign oil, he wrote, “has led us to do business with governments that support and fund terrorism, and this must be stopped.” His proposed solution, an “all options” posture, involved “aggressive exploring” of both domestic and alternative energy sources, which would “keep more of our energy dollars” in America while “reducing the power of terrorist regimes.”

Wittman talked a big game with these pledges, but cited no specific technologies, legislation, or dollar figures to turn them into action. His pledges also didn’t account for environmental protection, climate change, alternative energy sources, or domestic energy resources. He was making a statement on values, not outlining a concrete policy blueprint. Wittman’s first energy promise was to solve a problem he defined in moral terms yet offered no mechanism to solve it. In retrospect, that was the start of a pattern.

2008 — No new energy promises

Wittman’s archived 2008 campaign site contains no new energy policy statements. Given that 2008 was the year oil prices reached a historic high of $147 per barrel and energy dominated the national political conversation, the absence of them is notable. Whether this reflects an incomplete archive or a deliberate choice by Wittman (fossil fuel dominance equals mission accomplished?), we couldn’t find any new energy pledges on record for that year.

2010 — The “all of the above” era begins

By the end of Wittman’s first full term, his national security framing remained unchanged, but his energy platform now included an “all of the above” strategy to increase domestic energy exploration, including wind, solar, hydro, biomass, geothermal, and nuclear. He became a proponent of offshore energy development so long as it was achieved “in an environmentally friendly manner.” He also linked the expansion of alternative energy sources to “high paying jobs in Virginia.” Wittman pledged to return gas pump tax revenues paid by Virginians back to the state. He also framed telework as an energy-saving strategy that would “keep folks off the already crowded roads.”

In sum, Wittman used disingenuously worded pledges to claim credit for solar and wind energy projects while continuing to champion offshore drilling and oil shale extraction. Nor did he elaborate on what he meant by conducting offshore energy extraction in an “environmentally friendly manner.”

2012 — Copy, paste, repeat

Wittman’s 2012 energy campaign platform was identical to his previous one. At the same time, the national energy landscape between 2010 and 2012 was anything but static: the shale boom was accelerating, offshore deepwater drilling led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and solar panel prices had dropped by as much as 14%. Yet Wittman’s campaign website reflected none of it.

During this term, he introduced The Advancing Offshore Wind Production Act (H. R. 1398), but it failed in the Senate. After four years in Congress, including a seat on the Natural Resources Committee, Wittman’s pattern conveys that energy is a checkbox for him, not a priority.

2014 — The most aggressive energy platform on record

In 2014, Wittman put his energy policy into his “Jobs for Virginians” section, claiming credit for “creating thousands of jobs.” Specific legislation appeared for the first time. Wittman described being a lead co-sponsor of the Offshore Energy and Jobs Act (H. R. 2231), which required the Secretary of the Interior to develop a new 5-year oil and gas leasing program and mandated three specific Outer Continental Shelf lease sales off Virginia’s coast. He also voted for the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act (H. R. 1965), aimed at expanding onshore energy production and streamlining the permit process. Both bills expanded fossil fuel extraction — offshore and on federal lands, although neither advanced to become laws.

This was Wittman’s most energy-aggressive campaign platform so far. But despite the way he baked fossil fuel and renewable energy into one big pie, his “all of the above” stance and his two cited bills provided cover for his fossil fuel expansion votes. He promised to support energy independence and abundance, but only delivered votes that served Big Oil.

2016 — Same bills, new election

Wittman’s 2016 energy platform repeats the one from 2014 — including the same two legislative citations, H. R. 2231 and H. R. 1965. Although they hadn’t advanced to laws, he cited their existence as achievements, for a veneer of accomplishment. The Paris Agreement was signed in April 2016; solar prices had dropped since 2010; and the scientific consensus on climate change had never been stronger. Was Wittman living under a rock? His campaign promises included zero awareness of energy-related current events. By citing dead legislation, he gave the appearance of specificity without the substance of it, thus evading accountability.

2018 — The year energy disappeared

Wittman’s energy policy ideas appeared in every campaign platform since 2007, but seemed to vanish in 2018. This smacks of silent complicity, because during that time the Trump administration was rolling back Obama-era energy and climate regulations, to the detriment of places like the Chesapeake Bay and James River.

Supporting Trump’s Big Oil energy policies made it hard for Wittman to position himself as a champion of the environment to his constituents. Rather than taking meaningful steps to resolve this tension, Wittman quietly removed his energy policy pledges from his campaign website and hoped no one noticed.

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2020 — The clean energy rebrand

Wittman rebranded his energy pledges with sparkly new language. For example, “Working for Energy Independence” became a subsection of “Environment and Energy.” Gone was the terrorism framing, oil shale, biomass and geothermal, which were replaced with terms like “carbon capture” and “greenhouse gas emissions.” His energy list included natural gas, nuclear power, hydropower, wind, and solar, yet didn’t draw a distinction between natural gas and zero-carbon sources on the grounds of climate impact.

Wittman cited his (largely inconsequential) support for the “permanently reauthorized…Land and Water Conservation Fund, which channels royalty revenue the federal government receives from offshore oil and gas projects into conservation projects.” That’s hardly a statement of past or future action. Then he cited his membership in the House Renewable Energy Caucus as if to impress us with his “credential” of knowing that investing in “clean, reliable” energy is “a great place to start” protecting the environment.

His campaign pledge shifted from the seriousness of national security to the optimism of innovation, stating that “The United States is already leading the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through innovation and technological development.” His focus also turned to removing barriers to new technology rather than new regulations.

Despite Wittman’s marketing rebrand, the actual list of energy sources he supported barely changed. But the language did — natural gas remained, now framed as “clean” energy. His claim that America is “already leading the world” in emissions reduction is the kind of reassurance that makes additional legislation feel unnecessary — which may have been exactly his point. This messaging essentially let Wittman off the hook by implying the problem was being managed, so major new action on his part was unnecessary.

2022 — A focus on energy independence and affordability

Wittman’s campaign platform formalized his 2020 clean energy reframe. Energy takes center stage in the environment section for the first time since 2016. He pledged to support the same energy sources as before; parroted his previous statement about the U.S. leading the world in greenhouse gas emission reduction; and reiterated his support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. He again emphasized harnessing domestic “all of the above” energy sources to keep America energy-independent.

Two new pledges surfaced: a consumer-oriented promise that involves “lowering the cost for hardworking families” and protecting the environment without “expense to jobs, prosperity, and national security.” These were a departure from his theme of threats to America’s energy sources from hostile regimes, likely because gas prices hit record highs during the Biden administration — and because Wittman must have been aware that the GOP tried to make us believe they never went back down.

In 2022, Wittman invoked energy independence, affordability, clean energy, and national security all in one section — while still touting natural gas as clean and reliable. “Affordable and reliable energy” is a popular position because no one campaigns for expensive, unreliable energy. What Wittman’s campaign promises lacked was specific, concrete legislative strategies. How will energy become more affordable? What policy would he propose to reduce costs for things like his constituents’ heating bills? His platform didn’t say, rendering his promises hollow and worthless.

2024 — The push for nuclear power

Wittman’s platform in 2024 followed the previous two campaign templates, but introduced one significant new element under “Natural Resources: Energy”: the 21st Century American Atomic Energy Age Act (H. R. 3553). Wittman described his bill as unleashing “the full potential of nuclear power and pav[ing] the way for a prosperous, secure, and energy-independent future.” For context, back in 2023, he supported former Governor Youngkin’s proposal for Virginia to build America’s “first commercial, next-generation small modular reactor.” Nuclear power plants like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are unproven technology that will take years to build.

In 2024, as part of his role on the House Armed Services Committee, Wittman asked “for more procurement for nuclear micro-reactors” to “ease the logistics of powering forward bases.” But such projects take time, and as of Wittman’s request, the Pentagon was only at the planning stage regarding testing nuclear microreactors “in the near future.” Wittman is nothing if not consistent in his unrealistic energy goals.

H. R. 3553 is the most concrete new energy commitment in Wittman’s legislative record and campaign platform since his Offshore Energy and Jobs Act of 2014. Why, after over a decade of including nuclear energy pledges during his re-election campaigns, did he introduce this legislation in 2024? Perhaps it had something to do with his desire to build data centers on naval bases. Ramping up data center development hasn’t always been a boon for consumers, but we know Wittman stands to benefit personally from his energy investments. Who does Wittman serve, his constituents or Big Tech?

2026 — Lather, rinse, repeat

As part of his 2026 re-election campaign, Wittman promises us:

• An “all-of-the-above” approach to energy investment (including dirty fossil fuels that ruin our lands and keep us dependent on foreign oil)

• Domestic energy independence (which could lead to oil drilling in wildlife habitats)

• Clean energy (despite voting to eliminate clean-energy tax credits)

• Energy production linked to affordability, jobs, and national security (even though he voted to increase costs, slash jobs, and keep the Iran War going)

• The 21st Century American Atomic Energy Age Act (H. R. 3553) (but at what risk?)

• “The U.S. leads the world in greenhouse gas emissions” (but electricity prices didn’t decline after former Governor Youngkin yanked Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative)

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Pie-crust promises: easily made, easily broken

During his re-election campaigns, Wittman has routinely promised an abundance of energy from a multitude of sources, along with related benefits such as jobs. His campaign pledges always sound grand but contain little in the way of actionable strategies or results. And when he has legislated, he has supported fossil-fuel-friendly bills that would prop up smog-belching power plant relics and increase our utility bills; voted to eliminate clean-energy tax credits; and favored “Drill Baby Drill” policies, such as the kind that temporarily stabilized coal in southwest Virginia, created no new jobs, and didn’t lower energy prices.

Several themes emerge from his ever-evolving energy campaign promises. These deserve close scrutiny as we head toward the 2026 Congressional midterm election:

• A shifting focus from national security as the rationale for energy independence to a rationale of innovation and cutting red tape

• Natural gas is a permanent guest in his campaign pledges

• Promises of offshore drilling that peak and wane with the political winds

• Nuclear energy at first absent, but later an anchor of his energy promises

• Campaign promises recycled from one election to the next, even when action on these promises was neither attempted nor accomplished

• Consistent avoidance of any acknowledgement of climate change

• Energy development framed in terms of fostering jobs for VA-01, while Wittman votes to cut civilian federal jobs

• Hollow promises of conservation funding despite its fossil fuel costs

• Empty promises of affordable, reliable energy, with no clear mechanisms for delivering on that promise

These themes, especially in the past 10 years, reflect Wittman’s prioritization of Trump administration policies, loyalty to his big donors, and his drive to increase his personal wealth over his constituents’ needs.

Wittman has indeed delivered some results, but not necessarily the ones we expected or wanted:

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Wittman sits on the House Committee on Natural Resources and is a member of the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus. Yet all told, he has sponsored a mere seven energy bills over his 19 years in Congress. Only two of Wittman’s bills became law.

We can’t change the past, but we can hold Wittman accountable now and in the future. The best way to accomplish that is to VOTE on November 4 for a representative who will strive to balance Virginia’s energy and economic needs with our quality of life in transparent, accountable ways. Meet seven options better than Rob Wittman.

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