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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.

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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Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. Social Security and Medicare ARE NOT handouts — you’ve funded them out of every paycheck of your working life. Veterans’ benefits were earned in uniform. Pell Grants put first-generation students through Rappahannock Community College or Christopher Newport University. SNAP feeds working parents between paychecks, Head Start gets a four-year-old in Hanover ready for kindergarten, and Social Security Disability keeps a roof over the head of a neighbor who is no longer physically able to work.

These are the threads that hold an ordinary life together. Right now, every one of them is fraying — and Rob Wittman voted for the bill that cut these threads. He stayed silent while the agencies that run these programs were gutted; sent out emails portraying cuts to programs and giveaways to billionaires as good news; and now he’s faking phone calls to avoid answering questions about Mike Johnson’s threats to Social Security.

The status of program cuts, mid-2026

In the last year, the federal government has:

• Pushed out more than 8,000 Social Security Administration workers — a 14% cut that left SSA with fewer employees than at any point since 1967.

• Cut federal SNAP funding by $186 billion through 2034 — the largest cut to food assistance in our country’s history — driving a 14.4% drop in Virginia SNAP participation in just five months.

• Cut more than $300 billion from federal student loans over a decade, and moved to dismantle the Department of Education entirely.

• Set Social Security’s retirement trust fund on course to run dry in 2032 — six years from now.

Wittman voted for the law at the center of most of this. Let’s go program by program.

The Social Security promise

Republicans, Wittman included, ran on protecting Social Security. The Social Security Administration even blasted out a celebratory email last July quoting its commissioner saying the new budget law “reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security.” To them, “protecting” Social Security appears to mean cutting benefits and the Social Security Trust fund itself until the agency and program collapses entirely. Here’s how Wittman and his peers are going about it.

H. R. 1, now signed into law as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (or what Wittman euphemistically calls the “Working Families Tax Cut Act”), cut the income tax that seniors pay on their benefits — money that flows straight into the trust fund. This reduces Social Security’s dedicated revenue by roughly $30 billion a year. The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that this accelerates the retirement trust fund’s insolvency by a full year, to late 2032 — just six years from now. The Social Security Administration has now adopted that earlier date, citing H.R. 1 as a root cause. When the fund becomes insolvent, benefits will be automatically cut by about 24% — roughly $500 a month for the average retiree, more than many seniors spend on groceries.

The same law created new government-seeded investment accounts for newborns that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent himself called a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security” — before hastily walking the remark back once it made headlines.Wittman voted yes regardless. Mike Johnson is now openly mulling cuts to Social Security (and Medicaid and Medicare), and justifying it by pointing to the massive national debt created by H. R. 1 — the very same bill that Johnson, Wittman, and Trump all championed! He also says that they’ll “fix” the programs by rooting out “fraud, waste, and abuse” — this is the same fake justification they used to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, which is now shutting down hospitals across the country.

The reason Social Security keeps sliding toward insolvency is this: high earners pay Social Security tax on a small proportion of their wages, and the wealthiest Americans (whose wealth doesn’t come from wages) pay almost nothing at all. Social Security is funded by a 12.4% tax on wages, but only up to a yearly cap — $184,500 in 2026, up from $176,100 the year before. Every dollar earned above that cap goes untaxed; income from capital gains, dividends, interest, or rent escapes the Social Security tax entirely. That design held up when the cap covered about 90% of all wages back in 1983 — but as income rocketed to the top, the base eroded. Today the cap covers only about 83% of wages, and the share of earnings sitting above it has jumped from 10% in 1983 to more than 17% by 2024. So the cashier at the Food Lion in Tappahannock pays 6.2% on every paycheck all year long, while a million-dollar earner stopped paying Social Security tax back on March 9, and a trillionaire like Elon Musk — who takes no salary — may have effectively stopped paying on New Year’s Day, since the Social Security tax never touches capital gains income. A millionaire’s effective Social Security tax rate works out to under 1%. Yours is 6.2%.

That’s the part of the “crisis” you won’t hear from Rob Wittman, because naming it points to an obvious fix he won’t touch. Simply lifting the cap so the highest earners pay on all their wages would close roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of Social Security’s entire long-term shortfall with no benefit cuts at all, and would push the insolvency date back about 21 years. But Wittman frames the program as a spending problem, never a revenue one. In his own op-ed on “fiscal responsibility,” he cast Social Security and Medicare as victims of the national debt and called for “targeted savings — not reckless cuts,” echoing Mike Johnson’s claims that “waste, fraud, and abuse” are to blame. Wittman and Johnson always focus on cutting spending (in other words: restricting your access to the benefits you’ve already earned), and never suggest that those above the cap should pay in.

Wittman hasn’t signed on to any proposals to lift the cap. When a reporter asked him in June 2026 about Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to “adjust and fix” Social Security, Wittman faked a 90-second phone call and walked away rather than answer. (And that was a repeat performance from a week earlier, also to avoid talking to a reporter.) Wittman’s conduct shames the First District.

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What Wittman will do is clear: he touts “no tax on Social Security” — the very One Big Beautiful Bill provision that drains roughly $30 billion a year more from the trust fund. His own caucus has floated a plan to raise the retirement age to 69 — which is a benefit cut of about 13%, with not a dollar asked of anyone above the cap. He’ll let the Food Lion cashier’s check get cut before he’ll ask any hedge-fund partner to pay Social Security on their stock gains. WTF, Rob?

And Republican cuts extend to the Social Security Administration itself, as they prod the agency towards collapse. After the DOGE staffing purge, 42 states and D.C. lost more than 10% of their SSA staff. SSA set an internal goal of cutting field-office visits in half, and disability claims are getting harder to win as the agency leans on automation.

This has a real impact in our district: more than 1.6 million Virginians collect Social Security, nearly 147,000 receive disability income through SSI, and the program lifts more than 364,000 Virginians out of poverty.

You’ve paid in your whole working life. Wittman’s billionaire giveaways mean Social Security will run out of money in six years, and your benefit will get cut. He refuses to require high earners to pay their fair share into Social Security, and his party has made it harder to reach a human being when you need help. WTF, Rob?

Much less food on the table

We covered SNAP in WTF #1, and the damage is clear. Wittman voted for the biggest food-assistance cut in history, and the Congressional Budget Office projects about 2.4 million people will lose SNAP in a typical month.

The cruelty is in the fine print. To keep their benefits, adults deemed “able-bodied” must now log 80 hours of work or training a month — about 20 hours a week — or get cut off after three months. The law vastly widened the group to whom that rule applies, raising the age ceiling from 54 to 64; narrowing the parents’ exemption so it ends when a child turns 14 instead of 18; and stripping exemptions for veterans, homeless people, and former foster youth. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the expanded rules alone could push more than a million older adults aged 55–64 off food assistance. And starting October 1, 2026, Virginia is on the hook for 75% of SNAP administrative costs — and a share of the SNAP benefits themselves — a cost shift that lands squarely on the state budget. Our state taxes will have to increase to cover these unnecessary cuts and the shift in responsibility.

The food banks suffer first. As of June 2026, Virginia pantries report record demand while the federal government has cancelled hundreds of millions in food-bank deliveries — nearly 1.8 million pounds of food aid to Virginia in a single summer. SNAP used to provide 90% of meals, with food pantries handling the remaining 10%. With these cuts, the math doesn’t work. People in Virginia will go hungry.

From preschool to college, students suffer

Education funding took a quieter but equally serious hit. The same “OBBB” law cut more than $300 billion from federal student loans, and a wave of changes are due to hit on July 1, 2026: a new lifetime borrowing cap, the end of Grad PLUS loans, and new limits on Parent PLUS. The administration has tightened Pell Grant eligibility and moved to dismantle the Department of Education, shoving Title I money for low-income schools over to the Department of Labor. The latest House spending bill goes further still, cutting Federal Work-Study by 26% and the supplemental grant program for the neediest students by 40%, and ending subsidized loans for low-income undergraduates.

Then there’s Head Start. During the 43-day shutdown supported by Wittman, Head Start centers nationwide started missing out on funding; in Virginia, Hanover County had to dip into contingency funds to keep its classrooms open. And now the program faces what advocates call a “silent cut”: a proposed 0.6% adjustment against an inflation rate several times higher — a real-dollar reduction that means fewer kids served. WTF, Rob?

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Veterans lose food and housing benefits

This is the one that may sting most in our district full of sailors, soldiers, and shipbuilders. Wittman wears the veteran-champion label hard, and to his credit, he co-sponsored a bill in late 2025 to bump up VA disability compensation. But a COLA bump means little when the broader safety net supporting veterans is being yanked out.

The food-assistance bill he voted for eliminated the SNAP exemption for veterans — the men and women who served our country are now subject to the same paperwork-or-lose-it rules as everyone else. As we documented in WTF #2 and WTF #3, the VA cut nearly 30,000 employees in 2025, thinning the very clinics our Yorktown, Fredericksburg, and Northern Neck veterans rely on. And the administration’s FY2026 budget proposed slashing HUD by roughly 50% and reallocating $1.1 billion away from HUD-VASH — the program that has housed more than 175,000 homeless veterans since 2008 — into a vague, untested replacement.

Wittman has not used his perch as Vice Chair of House Armed Services to publicly fight on behalf of our veterans. A press release celebrating a disability-rate bump doesn’t undo a vote that kicked veterans off food aid.

The tax break with his name on it (again!)

We keep coming back to this because it keeps being relevant. The same law that drained Social Security’s revenue, cut food stamps, and gutted student aid saves Rob Wittman personally between $19,900 and $59,300 a year, thanks to a pass-through deduction on his rental properties. The average Virginia working family’s benefit: $40 to $50. A senior facing a $500 monthly Social Security cut in 2032 didn’t get a vote. Wittman did, and he used it for himself.

What this means for you

Let’s make this simple:

Rob Wittman cast a vote for nearly all of those outcomes, then sent emails framing himself as a protector of the First District. The next time he tells you he’s safeguarding Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare, or standing up for veterans, ask him about late 2032, ask him about the SNAP exemption he took from veterans, and ask him why a bill that cuts your child’s student aid hands him $59,300. Then call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his next staff-only mobile office hours, and remind him that you vote too.

The fifth 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 why Wittman’s seniority on the House Armed Services Committee, and his aspirations to chair it, will never translate into real power or real benefits for VA-01.

• On Tuesday we opened the Wittman Truth File on healthcare. 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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The concept of sin should be familiar to a church member like Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01). We’re surprised that his congressional track record suggests he might not grasp what it means to do wrong by his constituents. Where might he be going astray? Let’s find out.

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Pride

Wittman regularly brags on his website about his accomplishments, even though his voting record belies his many boasts. For example, he took pride in receiving the 2026 “Champion Science Award” from The Science Coalition. But it’s impossible to consider him a champion when he stood idly by as Trump fired the entire National Science Board; voted to rescind $9.4 billion in unobligated funds that would have supported things like the Clean Technology Fund; stayed silent when President Trump repealed the Endangerment Act; and voted to increase our exposure to lead.

Wittman takes pride in the fictitious idea that our U.S. economy is “the hottest” in the world, even as Trump administration policies have been tanking Virginia’s economy and job market. Wittman is proud of being a self-described “fiscal hawk,” yet none of his fiscal accountability bills has ever become law. Is he proud of adding $5.3 trillion to the national debt? It sure seems like it, or he wouldn’t have supported lots of draconian economic policies, including tax cuts for billionaires.

VERDICT: Rob Wittman preens like a peacock about his legislative accomplishments, including those that are unearned and those that have inflicted harm in VA-01 and beyond.

Envy

In 2021, Wittman declared that he’s “the most senior Virginia Republican in Congress.” He seems to covet credibility and authority. Even before he was elected in 2007, he was promised a spot on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). Ever since, he’s been aspiring to the Chair position.

In service of his goals, he has debased himself, made himself subservient to those he’s supposed to oversee, and effectively destroyed his ability to ever do the job of Chair. His craven pandering has confirmed his unsuitability for the very job he craves.

VERDICT: Wittman covets seniority and admiration far beyond what is warranted by his Congressional activities over 19 years in office.

Wrath

Wittman’s anti-immigration activities are evidence of his cruelty and anger at people who are breaking no laws in their efforts to have a better life and contribute to America’s success. Wittman helped trash a bipartisan border deal; votes for political-stunt legislation; spreads propaganda about immigrants and immigration enforcement; and stays silent while immigration enforcement morphs into political theater that hurts our communities. The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement measures — which Wittman supports 100% of the time — have an enormous blast radius. Children, families, and U.S. citizens are all caught up in it, sometimes to the point of death. Nothing illustrates Wittman’s uncontrolled anger more than voting for scorched-earth government policies that result in human casualties.

2025 witnessed a surge of protests against Rob Wittman because of his vote for H. R. 1 (the so-called “big, beautiful bill”) and his refusal to host in-person town hall meetings. One of these protests, on February 25, 2025, occurred at his “mobile office hours” in Midlothian. For nearly two hours, hundreds of constituents raised signs and voiced their concerns about Wittman’s support of H. R. 1 and its huge Medicaid cuts. Some of the protesters were so negatively impacted by his vote that they cried. Did Wittman respond or show any compassion? Nope — he shut down the Midlothian mobile office location shortly after the protest. Sounds like he had a problem managing his anger in response to constituents demanding that he do his job.

Wittman’s wrath manifests in other ways. He’s “a dangerous enabler” of the Trump Administration’s unsanctioned acts, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s orders to the US military to commit murder. Wittman’s angry disdain for his most vulnerable constituents is made clear by how many times he voted to cut the ACA and social safety nets like SNAP. He regularly votes to gut protections for workers, voting rights, and reproductive rights. His legislative actions repeatedly demonstrate that the cruelty is the point.

Wittman has demonstrated threatening behavior as Vice Chair of the HASC. In 2024, when the Navy canceled a submarine purchase because of a lack of “industrial base capacity to deliver two on time,” Wittman demanded they buy the usual two. Even though the Pentagon supported the Navy’s decision, Wittman called the Navy’s mitigation strategy “baloney” and threatened that “…they better get with the program, or — or else.” Or else what, Rob? Instead of collaborating with the Navy to improve base capacity, he took an adversarial and threatening stance.

VERDICT: Wittman has taken hostile, drastic action in response to reasonable, legal, and Constitutionally-protected behaviors of immigrants, his own constituents, and even the U. S. Navy.

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Gluttony

As Congress faced a looming government shutdown in 2025, you might expect Wittman to have done everything within his power to stop it. You could have imagined he would exhaust all options to overcome the deadlock of dueling funding proposals to reach a bipartisan budget deal. Well, you’d be wrong. Instead of doing his job, Wittman was fundraising “at a swanky steakhouse serving $28 cheeseburgers” and $51 lunch entrees. Cameras captured him leaving The Capital Grille, a favorite restaurant for lobbyists.

Wittman held this lavish fundraiser even as the imminent shutdown “would suspend the pay of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.” He claimed that, since Congress was still in session, his fancy dinner counted as “working.” That steak must have gone to his head. In his hunger for power and wealth, Wittman appears to have confused public service with working for big donors.

VERDICT: Wittman put his own appetites before the well-being of federal workers, his constituents, and everyone else who would be impacted by the shutdown.

Lust

Wittman expressed support for workplace mandatory sexual harassment training and voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405), and we’re glad he did. But that definitely does not absolve him of his Congressional inaction in matters of sexual predation.

Wittman doesn’t seem to mind that Trump was found liable of sexual abuse and that dozens of other women have accused him of sexual assault or harassment. The president’s extensive history of sexism and misogynistic attacks is mind-boggling:

• Trump’s “grab ‘em by the p----” comment on Access Hollywood

• Trump’s defamation and battery (i.e., sexual assault) of E. Jean Carroll

• Trump’s sexually explicit birthday letter to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein

• Trump’s barging into the dressing room of two young Miss USA 2001 contestants while they were unclothed

• Trump’s stream of misogynist comments, including but not limited to “blood coming out of her whatever,” “She never smiles,” and “Quiet, piggy.”

It’s unfathomable that the American president is an adjudicated rapist who was also cozy with Jeffrey Epstein; yet Wittman goes about his business like none of it matters. Compare his lack of Congressional oversight on the Epstein Files to, say, that of Rep. Ro Khanna, who took the bull by the horns by introducing the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405) to hold Trump and his administration accountable.

VERDICT: Wittman could have done much more to protect people from sexual predation than his single performative vote on the Epstein Files. His lack of moral authority is an embarrassment to Virginia’s First District.

Sloth

Wittman has been neither dynamic nor effective in his 19 years as our representative. He refuses to hold in-person town halls; the last one was nine years ago. He has consistently failed to defend the Constitution and uphold his oath of office. When it comes to legislation, Wittman does little work yet hogs the credit. The Community Project Funding (CPF) checks he loves to show off in photo ops represent woefully underfunded earmarks, and he expects us to be grateful for the crumbs.

Wittman has no hustle. In 19 years, he has been the primary sponsor of only 10 bills that have been enacted; some of those were just for naming things. As we mentioned above, none of his fiscal accountability bills have become law.

He’s a performative politician with a string of policy failures. And get this: in 2025, he only worked for 87 days in Congress. What did he do with the rest of his time?

VERDICT: Wittman underperforms across the board. He’s content to rubber-stamp and enable Trump, rather than roll up his sleeves and work hard for his constituents.

Greed

Wittman is a federal public servant and a representative of the people; at the same time, he is also engaged in accumulating personal wealth. It’s easy to buy his loyalty. Between 2023 and 2024, he vacuumed up $982,346 in PAC donations. Out of that amount, $68,000 came from oil and gas, mining, chemical & manufacturing, and electric utilities. PAC contributions account for 40% of his campaign contributions. We already know he serves big donors, not us:

Wittman’s money comes from large donors, organizations, and companies he oversees as a legislator, as well as from lobbyists — and almost nothing comes from grassroots contributions from the people of VA-01.

Beyond that, he enriches himself with Big Energy stocks and stands to benefit from a NextEra utility rate hike. He makes millions while in office as his constituents get poorer, inflation rises, the job market breaks down, and Virginia’s economy weakens. He profits from data centers. Defense contractors pay him to play; 21% of Wittman’s donations came from defense or defense aerospace companies (and individuals associated with those industries). Then there’s the conflict of interest that arises from his role as Vice Chair of the HASC.

Wittman has “exploded his net worth while trading millions in stocks.” He stands to gain $59,300 in savings from a bill for which he voted. Most VA-01 residents don’t have a triple-decker beach house, let alone the ability to slash taxes on it so their bank accounts can balloon to ever-larger proportions. But Rob Wittman does.

VERDICT: Wittman has been enriching himself while creating and enabling dire financial situations for his constituents.

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Wittman’s choices and actions during his congressional tenure carry echoes of pride, envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, sloth, and greed. He could have chosen to serve with compassion, a moral compass, and altruism, but he’s done the opposite instead. The result is that we, his constituents, continue to suffer.

Can Rob Wittman redeem himself? What do you think?

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.

Health underpins everything. Tax cuts, gas prices, jobs, and the rest matter only after we care for our bodies and minds. In the First District, we rely on the VCU Health Tappahannock Hospital that delivers our babies and stabilizes stroke victims; the VA clinics in Fredericksburg and Yorktown that treat backs wrecked in the Navy; the ACA Marketplace plans that a single mom in Spotsylvania uses to cover her daughter’s asthma inhaler; and the Medicaid cards that Northern Neck nursing home residents hand over every month.

All of these are in trouble right now, and Rob Wittman’s votes are to blame.

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The healthcare landscape, May 2026

We warned that Wittman’s votes would bring disastrous consequences to VA-01, and those consequences are now materializing:

• More than 1 in 10 Americans who had ACA Marketplace coverage in 2025 now rank among the uninsured, according to a March 2026 KFF survey.

• The average ACA Marketplace enrollee’s net premium rose an average of 58% in 2026, and subsidized enrollees who kept the same plan saw premiums more than double — a 114% increase on average — after the enhanced premium tax credits expired on January 1, 2026.

• The average deductible jumped about $1,000 per person as families resorted to cheaper plans.

• In Virginia, 33,000 fewer people enrolled in the Marketplace for 2026. The Commonwealth Institute estimates an additional 310,000 Virginians will be kicked off Medicaid because of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

• The Congressional Budget Office projects nearly 10 million Americans will lose health insurance by 2034 because of that same law.

• And as of June 2026, 13 Virginia hospitals — one third of all Virginia’s rural hospitals — are flagged as financially at risk of closure or service cuts because of those Medicaid reductions. Our own district’s VCU Health Tappahannock Hospital is at highest risk of closure.

That last sentence deserves to be read again. The congressman who represents Tappahannock voted for a bill that puts the hospital in Tappahannock on a national list of hospitals most likely to reduce services or close. WTF, Rob?

The pledge, the vote, the spin

In WTF #1, we included a story that bears retelling here in detail, because everything makes sense once you understand the pattern at play.

In March and May 2025, Wittman signed two letters to House and Senate leadership pledging he would not vote for any bill that cut Medicaid for vulnerable Virginians. About 100,000 of his constituents — 1 in 8 people in VA-01, or 12.5% — depend on Medicaid, according to Families USA. Statewide, 1.9 million Virginians rely on the program.

On July 3, 2025, Wittman voted yes on the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act (properly known as H. R. 1, or what Wittman likes to call “The Working Families Tax Cut Act”; we’ll refer to it as H. R. 1). It enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history: $911 billion over a decade, per the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The Joint Economic Minority Committee projected over 20,000 VA-01 residents would lose insurance coverage as a result.

Two weeks later, Wittman sent constituents an email titled “Setting the Record Straight on H. R. 1.” In it, he claimed the bill makes “no cuts in Medicare and Medicaid,” that hospitals would actually benefit, and that “rural hospitals will get quite an influx of dollars.” He wrote:

This was and is clearly false, as the evidence provided by the KFF, Urban Institute, FactCheck.org, and RAND Corporation shows.

Look at where we are now, nine months later: 310,000 Virginians are projected to lose Medicaid. Virginia’s hospitals lose $2 billion a year. Ten Virginia hospitals are on a national at-risk list. VCU Health Tappahannock is on that list. Setting the record straight, indeed.

The Tappahannock test

Wittman’s defense is the claim that H. R. 1’s $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) will save rural hospitals. He’s used this as a talking point; he issued a press release in December celebrating Virginia’s $189 million RHTP allocation, and he wrote in March that he has “supported the Rural Health Transformation Program to help stabilize and modernize rural hospitals.” Even in late May 2026, he sent an email saying, “I am pleased to have been able to secure this historic investment in Virginia’s rural health institutions.”

Here’s what he leaves out. KFF estimates that H. R. 1 will cut $137 billion in federal Medicaid spending from rural areas over ten years. The $50 billion RHTP fund covers, at most, 37% of that cut — but that won’t ever happen because of the restrictions the Trump administration put on the allowable use of that money. They capped the share of the fund that can be used for health provider payments at 15%. This means 85% of the RHTP funds can only be used for things like workforce training, infrastructure, and health information technology. None of that keeps a rural hospital’s doors open or compensates it for the Medicaid patients it’s treating at a loss. The cuts of H. R. 1 are real and are devastating healthcare across the country – especially in rural areas that rely on Medicaid more than other forms of health insurance.

Wittman also portrays himself as instrumental to Virginia’s securing the RHTP funds, but that’s also deliberately misleading. The funds are distributed based partly on a formula and partly on applications from state governments. Wittman and his fellow Virginia Republicans in Congress – Jen Kiggans (VA-02), John McGuire (VA-05), Ben Cline (VA-06), and Morgan Griffith (VA-09) – are using the fund to cover up their otherwise-empty legislative achievements.

It’s also worth noting that the fund lasts five years. The Medicaid cuts are permanent.

Centra Southside Community Hospital in Farmville is also on the at-risk list, and has already shut down its labor and delivery unit, OB-GYN surgical services, and its affiliated women’s center, citing “recently enacted reductions in federal healthcare funding.” That’s a preview of what closure of services looks like. Mothers driving an hour to deliver babies. Heart-attack patients losing the precious minutes that determine whether they survive.

Wittman calls this “stabilizing rural hospitals.” WTF, Rob?

The ACA subsidy whiplash

By autumn 2025, every member of Congress knew what would happen if the enhanced ACA premium tax credits expired on December 31. KFF had said it. Insurers had said it. AARP had said it. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission had the numbers: over 300,000 Virginians used those credits.

Wittman, having voted in July to let them expire, watched as constituents stormed his October tele-town hall. One wrote in the chat: “Republicans do not want to take responsibility for the horrendous increase in health care premiums.” Another: “You took away $150 billion from hospitals!!”

The federal government shut down for 43 days — the longest shutdown in U.S. history — largely because Senate Democrats refused to reopen it without an extension of those credits. Wittman publicly demanded a “clean” reopening with no extension. The credits expired anyway on January 1, 2026.

A week later, after the damage was done, after open enrollment had already locked in higher premiums for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, Wittman became one of 17 House Republicans to vote for a three-year extension. The Senate didn’t pass it. The credits were already cut off, and they remain expired today.

And he’s still spinning it! On June 1, Wittman emailed constituents headlined “Protecting Virginians from Sudden Health Care Cost Increases,” taking a victory lap for the January vote, while his July vote that caused the crisis goes unmentioned. It’d be a masterclass in political deception if it weren’t so transparently cynical:

• To claim the high ground of authority on the subject, his email opens by reminding us he has a master’s in public health and 26 years at the Virginia Department of Health. But this only makes him look worse to the informed voter: Wittman, a supposed expert in public health, understood exactly what H. R. 1 would do and voted for it anyway.

• He writes that the ACA credits “expired at the end of 2025,” as though they lapsed on their own, like milk left out too long. They didn’t. Congress let them lapse, and Wittman voted for the bill that made it happen – and he’s consistently voted to destroy the ACA.

• He frames the extension as “guided by the input of thousands of constituents” — a tidy phrase for the constituents who flooded his offices and town halls after he’d already voted to raise their premiums.

• And he reassures readers it was a “strictly temporary” fix, that he still opposes “permanent expansions of federal health care programs.” This is targeted at his political base and translates as: “The one healthcare vote that actually helped you was a reluctant exception, so please forgive it.”

Wittman’s “moderate” vote arrived seven months too late, after he’d already cast the “yes” that let the credits lapse, and only after his town hall comment sections turned into a public roast. Heroic.

The wrecking crew at HHS

While Wittman’s healthcare votes were doing their slow damage, his silence enabled faster damage at the Department of Health and Human Services. Since the administration installed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS Secretary, HHS has:

• Fired or forced out four NIH institute directors, the FDA’s former vaccine chief, and an ousted CDC director

• Cut nearly half of the CDC’s budget, with thousands of employees gone including specialists in violence prevention, smoking, reproductive health, and drowning prevention

• Cancelled $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts

• Withdrawn $1.3 billion in unspent Mental Health and Substance Abuse Block Grant funds that states, including Virginia, were counting on through year-end

• In the FY2027 budget request, proposed a 13% cut to NIH and a 32% cut to the CDC

Two unvaccinated school-age children died of measles last year — the first U.S. measles deaths in a decade. Veterans’ services, already gutted by the nearly 30,000 VA staff reductions we covered in WTF #2, have lost over 2,700 nurses and 1,000+ psychologists and social workers in our district’s VA service areas.

How many public statements have come from Wittman opposing any of this? Zero. As Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, with a sizable veteran constituency in Yorktown, Fredericksburg, Quantico, and the Northern Neck, his silence is its own kind of vote.

The tax break with his name on it. Again.

We mentioned this in WTFs #1 and #2. It belongs in the healthcare Wittman Truth File, too. The same law that cut Medicaid by $911 billion and let the ACA subsidies expire saves Rob Wittman personally between $19,900 and $59,300 a year, per the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The average Virginia working family’s benefit: $40 to $50.

A nurse at Tappahannock Hospital — assuming the hospital remains open at all — gets $40 for helping members of our community. Wittman gets his $59,300 for doing nothing.

What this means for you

If you have an ACA Marketplace plan, your premium may have more than doubled (as no doubt you’ve noticed). If you have Medicaid, you’ll re-verify your eligibility every six months starting in 2027, and you’ll probably do the paperwork your caseworker doesn’t have the bandwidth to process. If you’re a veteran, your VA clinic has fewer nurses and longer waits. If you live near Tappahannock or Emporia or Farmville or South Hill, your hospital is on a risk list.

Rob Wittman wrote us all an email saying none of this would happen. Then he voted to make all of it happen, issued a press release about a $189 million rural-hospital fund that won’t close even half of the gap — and continues to send emails taking credit for the performative vote that purported to undo a sliver of the damage. And he refuses to face you in person about any of it.

He has not held an in-person town hall since 2017, nine years ago. The next time he tells you he has “supported” rural hospitals or “protected” Medicaid, ask him about VCU Health Tappahannock. Then call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his next staff-only mobile office hours, and remind him whose healthcare he’s destroying.

The fourth 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 dug into Wittman’s (considerable) contributions to the national debt. His “fiscal responsibility” stance isn’t for real, fr.

• On Tuesday we opened a new Wittman Truth File, this time on jobs & the economy. WTFs are great for sharing with friends, neighbors, and anyone you know who might benefit from never voting for Wittman again. (So: everyone.)

Today we turn to the idea of Rob Wittman’s “seniority” in Congress, and specifically his role on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). This is one of the most powerful bodies in Congress. It oversees America’s defense, holding the Pentagon to account and ensuring our military resources are properly equipped and deployed. Wittman is currently the Vice Chair of the HASC and aims to become the Chair. But he’s faced with a problem: he might not get re-elected in November. Voters might ask what VA-01 could lose if Wittman is not re-elected. Let’s review Wittman’s work on the HASC, his possible path to the Chairmanship, and what we might gain with a different representative in Congress.

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What does the House Armed Services Committee do?

The HASC oversees the Pentagon, shapes defense policy, and guides the government’s national security agenda. The HASC is responsible for producing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets policy and guides everything from service member pay to weapons programs. This significant piece of legislation has been bipartisan for decades.

A brief history of Wittman’s positions on the HASC

Wittman has been a member of HASC since 2007. In addition to his Vice Chair role, he’s also chair of the Tactical Air & Land Forces (TAL) Subcommittee, and a member of the Seapower and Projection Forces (SPF) Subcommittee. TAL has jurisdiction over “ammunition programs, Army and Air Force acquisition programs related to aircraft, ground equipment, missiles, ammunition, and other procurement,” while SPF oversees various, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army acquisition programs.

Wittman is bullish about maintaining defense spending, both for modernization and military readiness purposes. He’s been determined to expand the Navy to counter threats from China and Russia. Wittman is perceived as an advocate for shipbuilding programs and naval readiness.

Wittman’s impact on VA-01 & Virginia as HASC Vice Chair

Some of the defense-related benefits Wittman claims to have delivered to VA-01 include:

• Securing $2.2m military construction projects and Naval Weapons Station Yorktown infrastructure. This was merely an incremental change, not a transformative economic achievement.

• 97% of Bethel Manor Elementary School’s student body in York County is military-connected (i.e. children of Langley AFB personnel), and Wittman helped get $3.25m for new classrooms to alleviate overcrowding.

That’s not very much for 19 years on the Committee. He makes various other claims about funding provided via the NDAA. But firstly, those are largely nothing to do with VA-01; and secondly, how much of those accomplishments are directly attributable to him, as opposed to other people’s efforts that he signed onto or otherwise endorsed? The NDAA is voted on by the entire Congress and it routinely gets broad bipartisan support. Wittman’s “wins” with regard to the NDAA are coalition products shared with other members (including Democrats like Elaine Luria, the former and hopefully future representative in VA-02).

Virginia’s $270B annual federal defense haul is structural and was built over decades, not delivered by any one member of Congress. Our state’s defense industries, shipbuilding, and military bases will exist no matter who’s on the HASC. But it’s also clear that Wittman has not grown Virginia’s defense economy as effectively as other representatives have served their own districts; during his tenure, Virginia’s defense economy has shown minimal growth at just 6.5% from FY2020-2023, and our share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from defense decreased by 14%. If Wittman’s presence on the HASC were so effective, these numbers would be radically better!

Also troubling: while on the HASC, Wittman put Virginia defense jobs on the chopping block. Precise numbers of defense jobs lost haven’t been tracked, but overall, Hampton Roads lost 12,000 civilian jobs in 2025. At least 6,000 of those jobs were federal civilian positions, and those plus additional job losses are at least partly due to federal cuts enabled by the Republican party, with Wittman’s support. And his proposed legislation for veterans is just “fantas[y] without any concrete, delivered benefits for veterans and their families.”

Wittman has had 19 years’ worth of opportunity on the HASC to deliver stronger growth and stability for Virginia’s defense industries. He has failed, and perhaps even inhibited growth while cavalierly risking defense employment in the state.

Wittman’s improbable path to HASC Chair

While focusing on his 19 years of service and ignoring his failure to deliver results to VA-01, Wittman’s supporters believe he will become Chair of the HASC if he succeeds in his bid for re-election this November. That is hardly a sure bet.

The term of the current HASC Chair, Congressman Mike Rogers (AL-03), expires in January 2027. If Republicans maintain the House majority in November, the House GOP Steering Committee will choose the committee’s next leader based on factors like seniority, expertise, and fundraising ability (i.e., to fill the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee). Wittman is one of several Republicans in the running to succeed Rogers. Previously, in 2024, he expressed interest in becoming Chair:

But Wittman’s path to the HASC chairmanship is contested. Other prospects include HASC members Rep. Ronny Jackson (TX-13), who is chair of the Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee, and Rep. Trent Kelly (MS-01). Some have speculated that Jackson, a retired Navy rear admiral, might get the job because he once worked as a White House physician and is considered a Trump loyalist. Wittman is Rogers’ “preferred successor” and might be just as loyal, but he lacks the proximity to Trump that Jackson has had. That could jeopardize his ambitions.

So Wittman becoming chair depends on Republicans keeping the House majority. Another possible scenario unfolds if he wins reelection but Republicans don’t retain control over the House, in which case Wittman would be a ranking member of the committee. If he does win and Republicans retain control of the House, he’s still likely to be passed over for Ronny Jackson or Trent Kelly.

It’s quite simple: if Trump wants a devoted lieutenant to manage the HASC so he can engage in unlawful attacks on sovereign nations and maintain an unauthorized war while attempting to mollify the public, he’s more than likely to bypass under-the-radar Wittman in favor of brazen publicity hound loyalist Ronny Jackson.

He’s no military “champion”

Suggestions that VA-01 should vote for Wittman because he will be chair of the HASC are wildly misguided. In the context of Virginia’s 2026 redistricting referendum, the Washington Examiner laments “the [potential] loss of senior lawmakers positioned to shape major legislation and funding priorities.” Wittman is identified as one of those lawmakers. The paper asserts — without evidence — that the Trump administration’s (questionable) relationship with Wittman “often drive[s] outcomes.” Wittman’s position and seniority on HASC, the claim goes, positions him to be a “champion” for Virginia’s “large naval base economy,” to directly influence Pentagon policy, and to guide federal spending. What proof is offered for this? None. This is all “vibes.”

It’s easy to make sweeping declarations about Wittman’s alleged influence and military advocacy on the HASC, but there’s little evidence that he’s powerful in either of those capacities. A champion for the military in Wittman’s position wouldn’t remain silent about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “security leaks,” the Trump administration’s illegal attacks on Venezuela, or the forced presence of the National Guard in American cities. Nor does a champion put military service members in harm’s way by sending them to fight in illegal wars.

There’s no evidence for the hypothetical claim that Wittman’s influence on the HASC could grow if he becomes chair. In what ways might Wittman specifically — as a documentably ineffective leader and congressman — direct benefits or confer advantages for VA-01 as chair that he hasn’t been able to manage in his 19 years on HASC subcommittees? Again, it’s just “vibes.”

What the evidence does show is that, as HASC Vice Chair, Wittman has not shown true leadership on any aspect of America’s armed services governance.

He’s struggling to manage VA-01’s military priorities

As Wittman Watch has demonstrated time and again, Wittman’s voting record has failed his constituents (and the country) in multiple ways. How does his leadership ambition for the HASC dovetail with his legislative track record in military matters?

We’ve already made the case that Wittman is ineffective at driving VA-01 “to ever-greater growth — from which the military, veterans, and all of us can benefit.” Despite the advantage of representing a district that nabs “substantial defense contracts…due to Norfolk Naval Station, Pentagon proximity, and established contractor relationships,” Wittman failed to secure enough funding “for the region’s defense installations and industries.” Virginia lags behind other states in defense spending and military/construction projects, and despite our area’s enormous military/industrial capacities and presence, the projects Wittman has secured have been small and incremental, not transformative for our state.

Wittman claims that he puts military service members first, but his inaction reveals a lack of compassion for them.

Under Wittman’s watch, the second Trump administration cut 40,000 Veterans Administration employees. That purge resulted in a huge loss of institutional knowledge and timely, high-quality care for veterans: “[E]ven though some of those positions have been refilled, the new employees lack the same skills and experience as the employees who were either fired or quit due to the toxic environment created by the administration.”

Due to the Iran war, the USS Gerald R. Ford became the longest-deployed carrier of the post-Vietnam era. In March, a fire on board meant hundreds of sailors lost bedding and slept on cots. The ship averaged one sewage failure per day. Sailors who are our neighbors (from Norfolk, Newport News, Yorktown, and surrounding areas) told the Wall Street Journal they’re considering leaving the Navy. Among those sailors was a mother who hadn’t seen her toddler in nearly a year. Wittman’s response when asked if extended deployments change anything: “The world gets a vote.” In a press release, Wittman said, “We recruit sailors, but we retain families.” Congress helped create the maintenance backlog grinding down our ships and crews. Wittman is partly responsible for that; he’s on the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee that is responsible for “Navy… acquisition programs and accounts related to shipbuilding.” Who did Wittman convene to address the chaos our sailors endured? Donor-contractors, behind closed doors at a historic hotel.

He hasn’t objected to H.R. 143, a bill that would cut “more than $100 billion in annual VA medical funding.” As far as we can determine, no veteran’s group has ever endorsed Wittman. Once again, despite his supposed seniority, Wittman seems significantly short on influence.

Too impotent to oversee our armed services

The evidence demonstrates that Wittman has failed his constituents in VA-01 and all Americans while he has served on the HASC.

• He votes to continue America’s unauthorized war with Iran, regardless of the rising casualty numbers and Trump’s calls for the annihilation of a whole civilization.

• Gas prices are spiking and inflation is rising because of the Iran War.

• The Trump administration is gutting veteran healthcare staff and services.

As HASC Vice Chair, Wittman could have used his power to prevent reckless military action that puts American troops in harm’s way. He should have wielded his influence to prevent the illegal invasion of Venezuela instead of commending the Trump administration for it after the fact. He also should have used his position to help prevent the Iran invasion. The most conservative reports suggest that at least 14 American service members have been killed so far during the Iran War, and over 400 injured. Wittman has said nothing about their suffering as allegations have surfaced that the Pentagon has been covering up the true number of casualties.

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee “questioned the Pentagon’s preparations and whether the administration ‘failed to protect Americans in the region from Iranian retaliation’.” According to Senator Warren, “Secretary Hegseth sent our troops to fight in Iran, refused to take basic steps to protect them, and then tried to cover up his failures when service members died.” Wittman should have taken similar oversight steps on the HASC.

Since the Trump administration began invading other countries, Wittman’s HASC duties seem to frequently be in service of the administration’s warmongering goals. During a HASC hearing on the Department of Defense 2027 budget proposal and the Iran War, Wittman lobbed an appallingly softball question at Secretary Hegseth. The question was so easy and the exchange so oddly cordial that we must wonder whether Wittman felt obliged to help mask Hegseth’s inexperience. Worse still, Hegseth ignored Wittman entirely and used up Wittman’s allotted time to berate a Democratic committee member for the TV cameras – and Wittman let him! This is not the behavior of a serious legislator committed to holding the Secretary of Defense to account. Instead, Wittman operates as an ineffective and deferential flunky for someone he regards as his superior.

At his roundtable of senior defense leaders and industry executives, Wittman said, “I will continue working with the Department of War [sic] and our industry partners to remove barriers and deliver results.” His declaration sounds like a plan to keep the Iran War going, not stop it. And industry executives like those at Wittman’s event will probably profit from the ongoing war. We already know that Wittman serves big donors, not us. Twenty-one percent of his campaign money comes from defense contractors – the same companies whose budgets he oversees on the HASC. That conflict of interest — especially if it leads to corruption or self-dealing — threatens to tarnish his positive accomplishments. It does not reflect the moral compass of a true leader.

Wittman rubber stamps the Trump agenda. In this case, his rubber stamping comes with the risk of more human casualties, an increased cost of living for his constituents, and global destabilization. Between Wittman’s unwavering support for the Trump regime and his struggle to manage VA-01’s military priorities, he is unfit for the position of HASC chair.

A different representative could deliver better results

What does it mean for VA-01 if Wittman loses reelection? It will cost seniority in Congress, but doesn’t jeopardize Virginia’s defense economy. Besides, our state has defense industry advocates in Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both of whom are members of the Armed Services and Appropriations committee. They have the influence and access necessary to provide oversight and meet the needs of Virginia’s military industry and service members.

A different VA-01 representative could deliver better expertise, leadership, and results on the HASC. Wittman’s qualifications for the role were always tenuous; his only military service experience was as a Virginia Tech student, in the Corps of Cadets and Army ROTC. HASC members must sometimes grapple with ethical questions such as which service members are sent into harm’s way, deciding which type of authority is used to go to war, and what would happen if the American government turned its weapons on its citizens. Wittman is not mentally, technically, or constitutionally prepared to lead debates on such grave matters as these.

There are times when possessing a moral compass, professional ethics, and compassion are essential for the health of American democracy and our military. Given Wittman’s failures as a congressman, his distinctly underwhelming record as a HASC member, his conflicts of interest, and his enablement of the lawless actions of the tyrannical Trump administration, it’s clear Wittman has not acted with the morals, ethics, or integrity that proper governance requires.

Of course, if Wittman doesn’t win reelection in VA-01, the whole question of him remaining on HASC in any capacity becomes irrelevant. One way to ensure our district has better representation on the HASC (and everywhere else) is to replace him with a congressperson who takes their oath of office seriously. Meet seven options better than Rob Wittman, and vote for one of them on November 4.

What do you think Rob Wittman can do better with his time on the HASC? Let us know what you think.

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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Here in VA-01, “the economy” might be a federal job at Dahlgren or Quantico, a shift at the shipyard in Newport News, a soybean harvest in Westmoreland, an oyster boat out of Reedville, or the small business your neighbor runs in Mechanicsville, Tappahannock, or Glen Allen.

By every measure, people in all of those places (and many more besides) are hurting right now. And Rob Wittman voted for every policy that caused them harm.

The job market is breaking down

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) April 2026 jobs report showed unemployment stuck at 4.3% and just 115,000 jobs added — well below historical norms. February 2026 payrolls were revised down to a loss of 156,000 jobs, the first outright monthly decline in years.

As Dwayne Yancey reported yesterday, UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center’s analysis shows that Virginia lost 10,400 jobs in 2025 and that we’re projected to lose another 17,800 this year. Even with projected improvement in 2027, the number of jobs will grow at the slowest rate since 2016. As Yancey noted:

Yancey goes on to state the situation quite plainly:

Virginia’s tumble in the national rankings demonstrates that Virginia’s economy is suffering disproportionately compared to the rest of the country — and Wittman unequivocally supports the Trumpian policies creating that suffering. No congressman should inflict this kind of damage on the state whose interests he’s supposed to represent.

While AI and the long-term trend of disappearing American manufacturing jobs played some role in the job losses (despite Trump’s claims that he’s bringing those jobs “back”), their impact is minimal compared to the Trump economic policies that Wittman continues to vote for.

Consumer sentiment follows suit: the University of Michigan’s final May 2026 reading came in at 44.8 — the lowest in the survey’s 74-year history. Roughly 30% of respondents specifically named tariffs as a source of worry.

Moody’s Analytics now puts U.S. recession odds at 48.6%. According to chief economist Mark Zandi: “There is an uncomfortably high 48% probability that the U.S. economy will suffer a recession in the next 12 months.” Q1 2025 GDP actually contracted by 0.3% as importers tried to front-run Trump’s tariffs.

That’s the backdrop. Now let’s look at what Wittman has been doing about it.

Current jobs aren’t keeping up with the Trump economy’s destruction

To date, Wittman has supported every economic policy proposed and implemented by the Trump administration. He and the administration’s smiling apologists insist that the US economy is “the hottest” in the world, and that these are good times for us all, despite the evidence we can see and feel every day. The facts show the undeniable economic reality.

When Trump entered office, inflation was 2.6% and on a downward slope toward the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% – precisely what the country needed. Under Trump, from April 2025 to April 2026 the inflation rate has spiked up to 3.8%. Meanwhile, wage growth in that same period was only 3.6%. Here’s why these numbers are vital: people with jobs can now afford less than they could in April 2025. This is not how compensation is supposed to work.

At the same time, Virginia’s economy is shrinking; state gross domestic product (GDP) went down by 0.2% this year – down from 6.2% just two years ago. The Weldon Cooper Center analysis says, “Economic conditions are projected to stabilize later in the year, but not enough to offset declines. Recovery, the report notes, depends on national-level economic changes” (our emphasis).

Recovery – if it happens – will require that Wittman and people like him change how they vote, assert their power as members of Congress, and push back on the Trump administration’s unhinged economic policies.

Wittman’s support for everything the Trump administration is doing to the economy – which we address more later here – is destroying household budgets. So even if you have a stable, long-term job, whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or resolute non-voter, you are losing in the Trump economy whenever you need to buy anything.

The “scalpel” speech and the sledgehammer votes

If you don’t have a stable job, Wittman definitely isn’t helping you. In May 2025, Wittman published a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed (also available on his website) on “fiscal responsibility,” in which he said:

Pay attention to that phrase: “a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.” Because his next move was to vote for the sledgehammer — twice! First he cast a yes vote on the February 2025 budget resolution that authorized the DOGE-style cuts, dismissing it as “a procedural vote, which didn’t make any policy changes.” Five months later, he cast another yes on the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, the law that codified those same policy changes.

In addition to the GDP shrinkage described earlier, the results in Virginia were (and continue to be) devastating to jobs and our economy:

• 23,500 civilian federal jobs lost in the Commonwealth through November 2025 - six years of growth, gone in 11 months

• The Department of Veterans Affairs alone cut nearly 30,000 employees in 2025 - including over 2,700 nurses, 1,000+ medical officers, and 1,000+ psychologists and social workers serving the substantial veteran population in our Yorktown, Fredericksburg, and Northern Neck communities

That’s not a scalpel; it’s a chainsaw. WTF, Rob?

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The tariff votes that hit Virginia farms and seafood docks

While Virginia agriculture braced for the worst trade shock in a generation, Wittman voted three separate times to make sure Congress wouldn’t even get to vote on stopping it.

• April 9, 2025 - Roll Call 94 (216–215): Voted YES on the procedural rule that disabled the National Emergencies Act review of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs through September 30

• September 16, 2025 - Roll Call 268 (213–211): Voted YES on the rule blocking a disapproval vote on Trump’s 50% Brazil tariff

• February 10, 2026 (214–217): Voted to prevent Congress from considering blocking the tariffs.

On October 28, 2025, the Senate passed Sen. Tim Kaine’s resolution to terminate the Brazil tariff emergency, 52–48, with five Republicans crossing over. The House never got to vote because of the procedural blockade Wittman repeatedly supported.

What does that mean for us in the First District? In March 2025, Virginia Tech agricultural trade analyst Xi He warned that retaliatory tariffs would “particularly affect Virginia soybeans, poultry, pork, and tobacco” — the four crops VA-01 farmers grow most. More than 90% of Virginia’s roughly 40,000 farms are small operations without financial cushion. Virginia’s $1.3 billion seafood industry, which employs nearly 25,000 people across the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula, depends on inputs and export markets which have been disrupted by the tariffs.

Wittman has not issued a single public statement opposing the tariffs that are slamming his own constituents.

The “shipbuilding champion” who said nothing

Wittman calls himself a shipbuilding champion. He is Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee and a ranking member of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee. There is no member of Congress currently better positioned to promote and defend Virginia shipyard jobs.

On May 30, 2025, Newport News Shipbuilding furloughed 471 salaried shipbuilders without warning. In November 2025, the company announced that roughly a third of them — more than 150 workers — would be permanently laid off.

Wittman’s public response? An April 16 photo-op with Navy Secretary John Phelan. No press release. No statement opposing the furloughs. No demand for answers from the Navy on contract delays. No public pressure on leadership to stabilize the workforce. At a May 20 Armed Services hearing on the proposed new battleship program, his stated concern was that the program “stay on schedule” — ignoring his own constituents who’d been laid off without warning.

If you’re the Vice Chair of Armed Services and 471 shipbuilders in your state get furloughed on your watch, silence speaks volumes.

The tax break with his name on it (again)

We covered this in WTF #1, and it bears repeating in the jobs-and-economy context. The same One Big Beautiful Bill that authorized the federal layoffs hammering Virginia families will, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, save Rob Wittman personally between $19,900 and $59,300 a year, thanks to a pass-through deduction tailored to his two rental properties.

The average Virginia working family’s benefit from the same bill: $40-50. The benefit to the shipyard worker who just got laid off in Newport News: nothing.

Wittman supported the 43-day shutdown

From October 1 to November 12, 2025, the federal government endured the longest shutdown in American history. White House data counted approximately 189,000 Virginia federal workers furloughed or working without pay. Virginia lost an estimated $396 million per week in gross state product. 825,000 Virginia SNAP recipients faced delayed benefits. Haymarket Regional Food Pantry reported a 200% jump in applications.

Throughout, Wittman voted with House leadership to perpetuate the shutdown. His most visible in-district appearance was a sparsely-attended visit with furloughed TSA workers at Richmond International Airport on November 6, five weeks into the shutdown.

What all of this means for you

Our elected representative voted for the federal layoffs, voted to protect the tariffs, stayed silent on the shipyard furloughs, voted himself a tax cut of up to $59,300, and won’t take your questions in person.

Wittman’s “moderate” label is doing a lot of work to hide his immoderate, MAGA-aligned record.

Next time Wittman calls himself a shipbuilding champion, ask him about the 471 workers at Newport News. If he repeats “scalpel, not sledgehammer,” ask him about the 23,500 Virginians who lost their federal jobs. When he says for the umpteenth time that the One Big Beautiful Bill helps working families, ask him about the $59,300 it could save him. Then call his office in Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC, show up at his next staff-only office hours, and remind him to whom these jobs — and this district — belong.

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 recapped some of the social media highlights of the last few weeks. Wittman posts new things all the time and our rapid-response team picks them apart on Facebook, BlueSky, and Instagram. We also chat there with followers. We love to chat with folks who agree with us and (especially) with folks who don’t. Subscribe to one of our social channels to get the full Wittman Watch picture.

• On Tuesday we launched our new series, Wittman Truth Files, with WTF: Affordability up first. This series profiles the gaps between Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record on the issues of highest importance to VA-01 voters. They’re great for sharing with friends, neighbors, and anyone you know who might benefit from never voting for Wittman again. (Y’know, everyone.)

Today we’re writing about one of the scariest numbers in the world: the U.S. national debt.

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When Rob Wittman became a member of Congress in 2007, the national debt was $9 trillion. He pledged to use “[c]ommon sense conservative principles” and to “prioritize spending and expose the waste, fraud and abuse in Washington.” Here we are, 19 years later, and the national debt is $39 trillion as of May 2026. Has Wittman operated and stood by those good old “common sense conservative principles”? Has he done his best to constrain government spending, and made real efforts to bring down the national debt?

The answer is clear, and the consequences will devastate Virginia’s First District.

Since his first campaign in 2007, “fiscal responsibility” has been the most repeated theme on Wittman’s campaign websites.

In 2010, when the national debt was $13.6T trillion (not $14.3T as his site claimed at the time), Wittman set out his position clearly:

• Opposition to any increase in the debt limit

• Support for a national commission on the fiscal crisis, to examine entitlement spending, tax policy, and all federal programs

• Support for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget

• Earmark reform to limit how much members of Congress could add to the budget

Of particular note, Wittman said:

Cycle after cycle, Rob Wittman re-pledged a trio of his own “fiscal hawk” bills: the Stay on Schedule Resolution, the No Budget No Pay Act, and the Inaction Has Consequences Act. The balanced budget amendment never passed. Not one of those three accountability bills became law. And the U.S.’s annual budget, which Wittman pledged to shrink, is running at a $1.9 trillion deficit (loss) every year. The national debt is expanding more rapidly today than it did in 2010.

What led to this, and what was Wittman’s role in it?

Wittman’s actions speak louder than his words

The debt is not attributable to any single member of Congress, but when we look at Wittman’s key votes and actions, we see a very clear pattern: his pledges never match his votes.

Two votes in particular stand out because, between them, they added more than $5 trillion to the national debt – and both happened under President Trump.

• December 2017:
  Wittman voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it added about $1.9 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade.

• July 2025:
  Wittman voted (twice) for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation put its 10-year price at roughly $3.4 trillion, and more than $4 trillion once interest on the new borrowing is counted.

Whatever happened to that 2010 commitment not to increase the national debt because it would endanger our future and put our economy at risk? What happened to the tenets of fiscal responsibility? Why would Wittman vote against his own credo?

We know that Wittman is perfectly capable of voting against a bill on cost grounds — he opposed the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure law on the grounds that it was too expensive. (Since the bill passed, he’s been happy to claim credit for projects that the bill funded). But when a multi-trillion-dollar deficit increase arrives in the shape of a tax cut, Wittman’s fiscal alarm goes quiet. The CBO’s $1.9 trillion verdict on the 2017 tax cut did not change his vote. The CBO’s $3.4 trillion verdict on the 2025 tax cut did not change his vote. The trigger for Wittman’s fiscal conscience is not the cost to America’s government and taxpayers; it’s the beneficiary. As long as his corporate donors and billionaire class bosses are making out like bandits, his complaints evaporate.

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Cloaked in the language of fiscal responsibility

Throughout Wittman’s career in Congress, he has used established “fiscal responsibility” language because it makes traditional conservative voters – who care deeply about constraining budgets and the national debt – feel comfortable, like they’re backing someone solid and responsible. But his votes show he’s doing a bait-and-switch. Wittman’s votes consistently do the opposite of what a fiscally conservative voter (from anywhere on the political spectrum) wants.

The effect on the First District is this: constituents most alarmed by the debt have a representative who reliably votes to enlarge it.

The spending

The gap between Wittman’s fiscal responsibility talk and his actions does not end with the two big tax cuts. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has launched new spending and fiscal maneuvers, and Wittman’s votes or public silences have obediently lined up with the administration.

• In June 2025, U.S. forces struck three Iranian nuclear sites without prior congressional authorization, at a cost of around $2 billion. The House defeated a war powers resolution vote on June 26, 212–219; Wittman was among the 219.

• Beginning in September 2025, U.S. forces struck 27 boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing roughly 100 people; UN experts have called those strikes extrajudicial executions. The House rejected successive Venezuela war powers resolutions, most recently 211–213. Wittman voted with the administration each time. So far, these lawless operations have cost $4.7 billion.

• In 2026, in collaboration with Israeli forces, the U.S. launched further and broader-ranged strikes on Iran. To date, these have cost at least $25 billion, with an ongoing cost of $1 billion per day. Wittman has voted against a war powers resolution, and has suggested there should be a supplemental appropriation for this unauthorized war — even more spending! — going into 2027.

• In October 2025, the East Wing was suddenly demolished to make way for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that Trump had pledged would not cost taxpayers a dime. The estimated cost has now more than quadrupled to $400 million, and a Senate Judiciary reconciliation bill seeks another $1 billion in taxpayer money for security tied to the project. Trump’s proposed self-commemorative 250-foot triumphal arch by Arlington National Cemetery — projected to cost $15 million to $100 million — already has $15 million reserved in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ 2026 budget. Wittman has not said a word against either project. What happened to careful spending and to rooting out waste?

• The One Big Beautiful Bill Wittman voted for appropriated roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement, detention, and border operations, including a gigantic expansion of ICE detention capacity. These funds have been routed largely to private contractors with ties to the administration, and granted without the usual competitive process. The only “spending discipline” in the bill came from gutting Medicaid.

Corruption and self-dealing at our expense

Then there’s the scheme that does not fit any definition of spending — because Congress never voted on it.

On May 18, 2026, Trump dismissed his own $10 billion lawsuit (in which he was both plaintiff and defendant, which is itself disallowed in law) against the IRS — a legally-questionable suit he had filed in January against the government he leads, over a 2019 leak of his tax returns — two days before a federal judge was set to decide whether the case was a genuine legal dispute or “unconstitutional collusion.” That same day, his own Justice Department, with the “settlement”signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump’s former personal criminal defense lawyer) created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” A five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, with the AG empowered to remove any member, will pay out claims through December 2028 to people the administration designates as victims of “weaponization.” The money comes from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund — taxpayer dollars set aside for legitimate federal settlements. The next day, the deal was expanded to “forever bar” the IRS from auditing Trump’s, his family’s, or his businesses’ pre-2026 tax returns.

This is a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund from a self-dealing settlement. Ninety-three House Democrats called the underlying lawsuit collusive in an amicus brief. A career DOJ Civil Division attorney said it amounts to “creating a government program… without going through Congress.”

While some Republicans have expressed dismay at this brazen attempt at Presidential-enabled corruption, which aims to steal $1.8 billion from U.S. taxpayers, Wittman has said nothing. In the days since the announcement, no public statement from him on the fund or the audit waiver appears in the press record. For a congressman who has built a 19-year brand on guarding the public purse, a $1.8 billion taxpayer fund routed around Congress to compensate the administration’s friends — and to shield the president from audit and accountability — absolutely demands comment.

The pattern is obvious

$2B Iran strikes: ✅
$5B Venezuela strikes: ✅
$25Bbn+counting Iran war: ✅
$170 billion in immigration-enforcement expansion: ✅
$400 million ballroom and a $1 billion security cost: 👍
250-foot arch: 👍
$1.8 billion slush fund and a “forever” audit waiver for the president: 🤫

For 19 years, Wittman has painted himself as a paragon of fiscal restraint. In the 17 months since Trump took office again, we can only infer from Wittman’s failure to register a single objection that the rampant unauthorized spending and the corrupt grifting are A-OK with him.

Who pays? WE DO.

And so the debt keeps growing, and the bill will come due – and Wittman expects the people of the First District to pay it.

To make the massive cost of its tax cuts for the ultra-rich look smaller on paper, the One Big Beautiful Bill pairs them with roughly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and hundreds of billions more from food assistance. The CBO projects 10.9 million Americans will lose health coverage. A $50 billion fund for rural hospitals sounds great — but in reality it is no match for the $1T Medicaid cut that lands on rural hospitals hardest. That’s a $950 billion shortfall.

In the Northern Neck, the Middle Peninsula, and other rural parts of our district, the nearest hospital is easily an hour away and already on fragile economic ground. When Wittman assured constituents the bill made “no cuts in Medicare and Medicaid” and that “rural hospitals will get quite an influx of dollars,” he was describing the $50 billion sweetener and deliberately ignoring the enormous, looming trillion-dollar cut.

So consider the deal that Wittman, the First District’s “fiscal hawk,” actually struck. Wittman did not reduce the debt — he added more than $5 trillion to it. And the “savings” in his signature bill did not come from the Washington waste he has campaigned against for 19 years, but from his own constituents’ health coverage and their local hospitals. The spending discipline, when it finally arrived, was real for exactly one group of people — regular Virginians — and absent for everyone else.

A quick summary of the events is helpful. Did Wittman keep his pledges?

The bottom line

The numbers speak for themselves. The deficit and Medicaid figures come from the CBO. The campaign pledges are quoted from Wittman’s own archived websites. The votes are recorded at Congress.gov under Wittman’s name. Check every one, if you’d like.

The brand Rob Wittman’s been peddling since 2007 just doesn’t hold up. For 19 years, he has asked the First District to send him to Washington as a responsible, reliable guardian of the public purse. Voters who answered that call — the ones who are genuinely alarmed by a growing $39 trillion debt — have gotten a congressman whose two largest votes added more than $5 trillion to that debt, who ignores and enables the rampant spending on wars and corrupt slush funds, and whose spending restraint only has consequences for a rural nurse’s patients, not for billionaires and grifters.

A promise that appears only during campaign season, and never in a roll-call vote, is not a principle. It is a slogan designed to buy your vote so Wittman can continue serving his donors, his own interests, and the crooked, corrupt, would-be autocrat with whom he is in league.

We cannot afford Rob Wittman.

What do you think about these numbers and Wittman’s votes? If you once voted for Wittman, are you happy with his work on the national debt? How should the next VA-01 representative address the national debt? Share your thoughts in the comments here or on our social media channels.

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 start with the highest priority of all: the cost of living. Groceries. Rent. Health care. The widening gap between what a paycheck buys today and what it bought a year ago.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has confirmed what every shopper at the Publix in Mechanicsville and the Food Lion in Tappahannock already knows. Inflation jumped to 3.8% in April — the highest annual rate since May 2023. Energy costs are up 17.9% year over year. Gasoline is up 28.4%. Beef costs 14.8% more than a year ago. The price of groceries rose 0.7% in a single month — the largest monthly increase since August 2022. Meanwhile, real average hourly wages (meaning wages adjusted for inflation) fell 0.3% over the last year – so every earned dollar buys less today than it did before Trump came into office.

Rob Wittman has done little to fix this. Instead he’s made several deliberate political choices that have made everything worse.

The “Working Families” vote that wasn’t

On July 3, 2025, Wittman cast a yes vote on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” otherwise known as H.R. 1. He called it a vote for “working families.” Here is what working families actually got:

• An estimated $187 billion cut to SNAP over the next decade, plus new state cost-shift requirements that kick in starting in 2028.

• A roughly $1 trillion reduction in Medicaid funding over the same period.

• The expiration of enhanced ACA premium tax credits, putting roughly 100,000 Virginians at risk of losing coverage at the end of 2025.

Between July 2025 (when the law was enacted) and January 2026, SNAP participation in Virginia dropped 12%. Nationally, more than 3 million people — an 8% decline — were pushed off food assistance. Those are not policy abstractions. Those are neighbors with empty cabinets as grocery prices are climbing astronomically.

Wittman’s response? At a July roundtable with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he insisted the bill would have “many positive impacts for working-class families.” He has continued to deny that his vote cut Medicaid in any meaningful way, even after the Congressional Budget Office estimated 10 million Americans will lose health insurance because of it.

The pledge Wittman signed and then broke

Before the vote, Wittman signed letters to House and Senate leadership pledging he would not vote for a budget that cut Medicaid. Then he did exactly that. The bill cleared its initial House passage 215–214. A single “no” — or even a missed vote — would have killed it.

That is not a procedural footnote. Wittman put his name to a promise, then traded the promise for a press release. WTF, Rob?

The tariff vote that hit your coffee cup

While grocery prices climbed, Wittman voted to keep them climbing. In September 2025, House Republicans — including Wittman — voted to protect Trump’s tariffs on Brazil. Brazil supplies about 30% of America’s coffee. Coffee prices have since spiked 20.9% year over year — the steepest annual increase since the 1990s.

Wittman claims on his official website that “[g]rocery prices are trending lower.” That hasn’t been our experience, and we bet it hasn’t been yours either. “Fighting for a more affordable America”? Come on, Rob.

Independent estimates put the cost of Trump’s tariffs at more than $2.1 billion annually for Virginians, and roughly $830 per household. Wittman voted to keep them in place. The administration eventually walked back tariffs on coffee, beef, and a handful of other items in November, but economists are clear that the price relief — if it comes at all — will take many months. Inventory bought at the higher tariff rate is still working its way to grocery store shelves.

The tax break with his name on it

In October 2025, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reported that Wittman personally stands to save between $19,900 and $59,300 a year thanks to a pass-through deduction in the same bill he voted for. ITEP pegged the average middle-income earner’s benefit from the bill at somewhere between $40 and $50.

Read those numbers again. A working family in Spotsylvania might save the price of a tank of gas. The congressman who voted for the bill could save the cost of a small SUV. While Wittman gets richer, you pay more for food, housing, and healthcare. That is not a partisan accusation. It’s arithmetic, and it’s definitely a WTF moment.

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The late, lonely vote

In January 2026, Wittman became one of 17 Republicans to vote yes on a three-year extension of the ACA premium tax credits — the same credits his July vote had let expire. He framed it as opposing the prospect of “allowing those costs to spike overnight” but, by that time, his vote was simply a performative gesture to look like he was protecting us. Wittman knew his colleagues would not extend the credits, and of course they didn’t.

Allowing those costs to spike was exactly what Wittman voted for six months earlier. His contrary vote arrived only after the bill came due, after constituents flooded his tele-town halls, after the longest government shutdown in American history, and after nine Democrats had already filed to challenge his seat. And it was too little, too late — thousands of First District families had already received their 2026 renewal notices.

The town hall he won’t hold

Through all of this, Wittman has avoided face-to-face contact with the constituents bearing the costs of his decisions. When nearly 200 voters packed an American Legion post in Midlothian in February 2025, he was absent; his staff said he was in D.C. When community organizers invited him to a Henrico gathering that March, his D.C. office told them staff “would not attend anything they had not planned themselves.” His October 2025 tele-town hall was so heavily filtered that constituents who had signed up days in advance reported that they never received the promised call. And those who could attend had no chance to ask questions that weren’t pre-screened.

Wittman hasn’t held an in-person town hall meeting since 2017. That’s nine years ago. A representative who genuinely believed his policies were helping working families would meet those families in person. Silence is its own kind of answer.

What this means for you

Inflation is up. Wages are down. SNAP rolls in Virginia have shrunk by tens of thousands. The Federal Reserve is no longer expected to cut rates this year, which means credit card balances, mortgages, and car loan rates will keep rising. The price of everything is spiking.

Rob Wittman cast votes for every single one of these outcomes. Then he tells you that the bill that caused them was for the benefit of working families.

The next time you hear him use that phrase, ask which working family. Ask whose grocery bill. Ask whose Medicaid. Then call his DC, Glen Allen, or Yorktown office, show up at his next mobile office hours, and remind him whose district this is. Because Virginia’s First District cannot afford Rob Wittman.

More Wittman Truth Files will be released next week. We’re just getting started.

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 make sure you subscribe to get next week’s installment right in your inbox.

Coming next week: We’re preparing to launch a brand new series of posts. Look for it on Tuesday! Today, instead of our usual deep-dive, we have a recap of social media highlights from the last couple of weeks. Facebook, BlueSky, and Instagram allow us to respond rapidly to whatever Wittman is doing, saying, or voting about, and as always, it’s been a lot!

Our Substack has been busy as usual:

• Last Thursday we showed you how Wittman uses immigration as a political wedge - without ever trying to do anything to solve the real immigration problems that do exist - to divide our district and fool people into voting for him.

• On Tuesday we wrapped up our “Myth of the Week” series by examining Wittman’s record as a public health professional in the legislature. Shocker: he votes with his party and almost never with the scientific consensus.

Now, here’s a sampling of rapid-response items from our socials that you may have missed. We embed links to BlueSky here because they’re viewable without a login; you can also find them on Facebook and Instagram.

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Wittman predictably silent on the largest, most brazen Presidential corruption in US history

The $1.776 billion “settlement fund” (it’s not a settlement) is illegal, unconstitutional, and a moral outrage, and it’s not even remotely questionable. There is absolutely no doubt that this is cause for impeachment of Trump and everyone who has enabled it. It is cut-and-dried theft from the American people, right in front of us, in the open. And Rob Wittman has said not one damn word about it. So we suggest that we all do something about it!

June 6th Candidate Forum in Williamsburg

The Democratic primary is probably the most important next step on the road to ridding our district of Rob Wittman. While our recent post described each of the seven candidates (plus one more who has since dropped out), hearing from each of them in person will help all of us decide who’ll get our vote.

Other forums are being held, including today in Richmond, but the June 6th event will have at least six of the seven in attendance.

Doing nothing, taking credit

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Plenty of us in VA-01 understand the stakes

Don’t forget: HR1’s biggest cuts haven’t even kicked in yet - but they soon will

Rob profits as Virginia’s largest utility approaches monopoly status

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Wittman is a rubber stamp for all of Trump’s crazy

Wittman could vote to stop the Iran war but instead wraps himself in the flag while ignoring the needs of our military

Wittman applauded himself for receiving a “Champion of Science” award but his voting record doesn’t match this title. At all!

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.

Thanks for reading, and let us know your thoughts here in the comments. What else should we cover? What angle are we not seeing? What is driving you crazy about Rob Wittman right now? When he’s kicked out, what should be the new representative’s first priority?

MYTH:

Congressman Rob Wittman is a public health professional with integrity

REALITY:

Wittman uses his credentials and experience to claim a special interest in public health, while he dismantles public health programs

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The very least we should expect from our elected officials — even and especially in the modern political landscape — is that they stand behind their promises and back up their claims. In other words, they should have integrity.

Congressman Rob Wittman claims he’s “passionate about protecting Virginians and raising awareness about how public health issues impact lives and communities.” Let’s find out if his public health-related actions line up with the way he presents himself to his constituents.

Credentials and background

After obtaining a master’s degree in public health, Wittman worked for 26 years at the Virginia Department of Health. At one point, he was an environmental health specialist for health departments in Virginia’s Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula regions. What might his duties have entailed? According to the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority (VHWDA):

Environmental health specialists educate and consult clients and enforce regulations governing the sanitation of food, milk and water; hazardous and infectious waste; sewage; institutional environments; and health hazards. They help improve water and sanitation facilities at recreational areas, nursing homes, schools, restaurants and other locations, and are actively involved in the overall environmental quality of a community.

As a congressman, Wittman has made plenty of statements about the importance of robust public health programs and policies. But his voting record doesn’t show any real commitment to those ideas. As a former environmental health specialist, he has not used his power to support needed regulations in the areas of food and water sanitation, or to maintain or improve environmental quality in the communities he represents. It’s hard to see how or whether his public health background ever informed his congressional efforts.

Wittman’s actual Congressional actions on public health

He claims to be a “champion of protecting and restoring the Chesapeake Bay” and introduced the Chesapeake Bay Accountability and Recovery Act, which became law in 2014. Wittman claims to value conservation and the environment, and pledged to support the Chesapeake Stewardship Grants, which Congress was already funding.

More often than not, however, he says one thing about public health issues and does another. Wittman claims to have “professional expertise” in water quality and other natural resources issues, but in Congress he voted to roll back clean water safeguards. He stayed silent when President Trump repealed the Endangerment Act and voted to increase our exposure to lead (which is especially egregious because Wittman’s own former employer — the state’s Department of Health — runs a lead poisoning prevention program!)

Wittman urged reform of America’s healthcare system to provide quality, affordable healthcare and commended U.S. public health professionals by posting about H.Con.Res. 62 on “Public Health Thank You Day.” But once again, his legislative work contradicted his messaging. He voted for H. R. 1, which includes steep cuts to Medicaid and cancer research; endorsed a plan to make pre-existing conditions a part of our healthcare coverage; undermined the Affordable Care Act; aligned himself with radical conservatives out to destroy the ACA; makes inappropriate medical decisions for his constituents; signed multiple anti-abortion bills; and supports forced birth.

The man who should have seen the hantavirus outbreak coming

Wittman didn’t object when the Trump Administration gutted the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program in 2025. His silence is especially alarming given the hantavirus outbreak aboard a Dutch cruise ship in May 2026. That outbreak resulted in three deaths and at least “10 confirmed or suspected cases” — including two Americans.

The outbreak situation is especially ironic given that Wittman’s job as an environmental health specialist likely involved duties to ensure proper sanitation. He also once worked as a field director for the Virginia Department of Health’s shellfish sanitation division. Wittman’s education and job experience tells us he knows — or at least should know — the importance of sanitation in public health, yet we can find no record of any statement, press release, or public speech in which Wittman sought to prevent or even criticize the shutdown of the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program.

Why isn’t Wittman bringing his expertise in sanitation to bear on a deadly outbreak of hantavirus? Who is he really protecting: our health and lives, or the Trump Administration?

Wittman’s harmful voting record belies his public health credentials

Potential voters who hear Wittman crow about his master’s degree in Health Policy and Administration and public health work experience might conclude, “Here’s a politician who actually cares about public health.” It’s true that he earned that degree and that some Virginians may have benefited from his work in the Department of Health.

Whether through his voting record, inaction, or silent complicity, Wittman supports Trump administration policies and regulatory rollbacks that weaken or dismantle public health and environmental agencies and programs. Such anti-public health attacks risk a loss of public health benefits to the tune of $22.3 billion. Millions of Americans are impacted by “lost consumer savings; more premature mortalities, hospital admissions, and asthma cases; worse air pollution; and higher greenhouse gas emissions.”

Wittman has been spinning a myth about how his public health experience informs his legislative work. The reality is that, as a Congressman, he’s been actively shredding the programs and funding we need to stay healthy. He pretends to be a public health professional with integrity when the opposite is true: Wittman’s votes have stripped our healthcare coverage and harmed our environment; he is sabotaging our quality of life.

How do you think Rob Wittman could show some integrity in the public health arena? Let us know in the comments here, or on any of our social media channels: BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

• Last week we showed you how data centers power Wittman’s pocketbook.

• On Tuesday we served up eight better options than Rob Wittman for VA-01.

• Check out our social channels for punchy posts and lively discussion. Join us on Substack, Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram, or Reddit.

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Congressman Rob Wittman wants you to believe he’s serious about immigration. His issues page opens with the line “America was built by immigrants” before pivoting to ominous talk of a “broken system,” “catch and release,” and the urgent need to enforce the law. It’s a familiar two-step: a polite nod to the people who built this country, followed by a long list of reasons we should be afraid of them.

So let’s ask the question Wittman doesn’t want asked: What has he actually done?

Has he supported the only serious bipartisan immigration fix in a generation?
No — he stood by while his party killed it.

Has he proposed a workable, humane plan to fix legal pathways that have been deliberately strangled?
Nope.

Has he told VA-01 the truth about what immigrants contribute to our economy, our farms, our shipyards, and our communities?
Absolutely not.

What he has done is vote for political-stunt bills, parrot misleading talking points about “open borders” and immigrants getting free smartphones, and exploit grief over a tragic killing to falsely attack the governor for trying to keep state law enforcement focused on actual crimes.

It’s time to separate what’s real from the propaganda, and look hard at the gap between what Wittman says about immigration and what he does.

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First, the truth: immigrants built (and still build) Virginia

There are more than one million immigrants in Virginia today, making up 12.5% of the state’s population. Of the top ten states by immigrant population, Virginia leads in the share of foreign-born residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher. And a majority of Virginia’s immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens.

Even undocumented Virginians — the population Wittman talks about most often, and most demagogically — pay an estimated $689.8 million in state and local taxes every year, funding Virginia schools, roads, and emergency services they themselves are mostly barred from accessing. They pay a higher effective state and local tax rate (7.9%) than Virginia’s top 1% of households (7.2%). More than a quarter of undocumented immigrant Virginians live with a U.S. citizen child under 18. These are our neighbors.

Nationally, the data is clear: immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — commit crimes at lower rates than native-born U.S. citizens. In the years in which border encounters reached record highs, violent crime in border states actually declined. The “migrant crime wave” Wittman and his allies invoke is a campaign slogan, not a data-driven statistic.

Here in VA-01, immigrants are not an abstraction. They are the workers in our shipyards, the farmhands harvesting Northern Neck produce, the doctors in our hospitals, the engineers at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, the small-business owners in Fredericksburg and Williamsburg, the kids in our public schools who are first in their families to dream about college. Wittman represents these people too.

Before we catalogue Wittman’s failures, one more thing needs to be said clearly: there is a real and significant difference between legal and illegal immigration. Legal immigrants — green card holders, visa holders, asylum seekers following the required process, DACA recipients, Temporary Protected Status holders — have every right to be here. Coming here legally has been made deliberately harder; in many cases, nearly impossible. Visa backlogs can stretch for years or even longer. The asylum system is buried under hundreds of thousands of unprocessed claims. Work-visa programs are too rigid to serve the agricultural and seafood employers right here in VA-01.

Wittman and Trump ignore all of this. In their rhetoric and their policy choices, they collapse the entire spectrum into a single threatening category with no legitimate claim to be here. That is not immigration enforcement. It is the deliberate erasure of legal status as a meaningful category. And it is the foundation on which every piece of their dishonest rhetoric is built.

The four big failures

Wittman has failed VA-01 on immigration in four interlocking ways:

1. Wittman helped kill the bipartisan border deal at Trump’s command

In late 2023 and early 2024, three senators — James Lankford (R-OK), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT) — spent four months hammering out a bipartisan border security deal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blessed the negotiations. The National Border Patrol Council endorsed the bill. Lankford himself called it the most conservative border security bill in four decades.

The deal would have:

• Raised the bar for asylum claims, with faster processing

• Given the President authority to shut down the border when daily encounters exceeded set thresholds

• Hired thousands more Border Patrol agents and asylum officers

• Funded fentanyl detection at ports of entry

• Ended the practice of having migrants wait in U.S. communities for years before their cases were heard

This was not a Democratic wish list. This was a deal Republicans had spent the previous year demanding. President Biden — whom Wittman calls weak on the border — had endorsed the deal and pledged to sign it.

And then, in a Truth Social post, Donald Trump demanded that Republicans in Congress kill it. Why? Because rather than help the country improve border security, he wanted the border chaos to continue to aid his run against Biden in November 2024.

Senate Republicans collapsed into line. House Speaker Mike Johnson declared the bill dead on arrival in the House. Senator Chris Murphy, one of the deal’s authors, said it plainly: that Republicans had crafted a bill too effective for them to support, because they wanted to keep immigration alive as a political weapon to exploit.

Where was Wittman?

Silent, compliant, and cowering. He did not break with Speaker Johnson. He did not co-sponsor an alternative bipartisan companion. He did not call for the deal to get a vote. He let the most conservative immigration bill in a generation die at Trump’s command — because Trump needed a broken border more than he needed a fixed one.

If Wittman actually believed his own talking points about a “border crisis” — if he genuinely thought Americans were in danger and the system was broken — he would have moved heaven and earth to pass that bill. But he didn’t, because the goal was never to fix the border. The goal was to keep the border useful as a political wedge, and to amp up Americans’ fear of the people they would have embraced as their neighbors.

That is the central unforgivable fact of Rob Wittman’s record on immigration. He never sincerely tries to solve the real immigration problems that America has.

2. Wittman votes for stunts, not solutions

Once the bipartisan deal was dead, Wittman lined up to vote for the showpieces — bills designed to dominate cable chyrons, not to actually overhaul a broken system.

H. R. 2, the “Secure the Border Act” of 2023

Wittman voted YES on this entirely partisan bill in May 2023. It passed the House 219–213 with zero Democratic support. It would have effectively shut down the asylum system, restarted border-wall construction, and barred even religiously affiliated nonprofits from helping migrants. Everyone — including Wittman — knew it had no chance in the Senate. It was a campaign prop, not a legislative effort.

The Laken Riley Act

Wittman voted YES in January 2025. The bill mandates ICE detention without bond for any non-citizen arrested for or merely charged with — not convicted of — offenses including shoplifting and minor theft. Civil rights groups across the spectrum opposed it: the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the League of Women Voters, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Education Association, the National Council of Churches, and many more. Their core objection was that the bill strips basic due process by mandating detention based on accusation rather than conviction — a principle that should alarm anyone, regardless of party, who understands that “innocent until proven guilty” is fundamental to the American legal system.

The murder of Laken Riley was a horror. Her family deserves justice. But the bill named after her would not have prevented her killing; it would, however, allow ICE to indefinitely detain people accused of stealing diapers. That isn’t border security. That’s expansion of carceral power dressed up in a young woman’s name.

H. R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill”

Wittman voted YES on this monstrosity in 2025, and a major component of it was a record-shattering expansion of ICE and CBP funding — the largest in U.S. history — to fund mass deportation. The same bill strips healthcare from roughly 323,000 Virginians, risks food assistance for 78,000 of us, and threatens seven rural Virginia hospitals with closure. Wittman traded our healthcare and our hospitals for an immigration-enforcement spending spree he could put in a press release.

Notice the pattern: every Wittman immigration vote is maximalist on enforcement, minimalist on solutions. He votes for detention. He votes for deportation funding. He has never once voted for a comprehensive bill that would clear the asylum backlog, expand legal pathways, modernize work visas for the agriculture and seafood employers in our own district, or protect the Dreamers who have lived here their entire conscious lives.

That isn’t an immigration policy. That’s a brand.

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3. Wittman’s rhetoric is engineered to mislead

Wittman doesn’t just vote for political-theater bills. He talks about immigration in ways calibrated to create fear and confusion.

In April 2022, Wittman went on Richmond radio and told listeners that the Biden administration was going to give smartphones to people crossing the border — implying lavish freebies for migrants on the public dime. The reality: ICE issues stripped-down devices for the specific purpose of tracking migrants released from detention. The phones cannot make personal calls, browse the internet, or open social media. They run a single app, SmartLINK, used to monitor non-detained migrants awaiting hearings. They are surveillance tools, not perks.

A serious legislator would have known this. Wittman either did know and said it anyway, or he didn’t bother to learn before going on radio. Take your pick — neither is good.

In March 2026, after the tragic killing of Fairfax County mother Stephanie Minter by an illegal immigrant, Wittman issued a joint Republican-delegation statement attacking Governor Abigail Spanberger for ending Virginia’s participation in the federal 287(g) program, which deputized state and local officers to enforce federal civil immigration law. Wittman framed it as a public-safety failure.

Wittman twisted the facts to suit his attack on Spanberger. First, the murderer was first arrested in 2018 and had a court order for deportation in 2020 – but ICE never picked him up, not even during Glenn Youngkin’s governorship of Virginia, and neither ICE nor Fairfax County law enforcement can explain why. Wittman completely ignored this history to cast Spanberger’s policy as the cause of Ms. Minter’s murder.

Second, Wittman twisted Spanberger’s policy to suit his attack. What Spanberger actually said was that state law enforcement should focus on investigating and solving crimes, not on civil immigration paperwork. Her directive explicitly preserves cooperation with federal authorities when there’s a valid judicial warrant. The reform is about resources and trust: when immigrant communities fear that calling 911 will get a relative deported, they stop calling. Crimes go unreported, witnesses go silent, and predators take advantage. Police chiefs across the country have warned about this for years.

Wittman knows this. He doesn’t care. He used the family’s grief to score a political point against the Governor.

4. Real enforcement doesn’t look like political theater

Here’s the part Wittman never wants to discuss: legitimate immigration enforcement and the spectacle currently unfolding under the Trump administration are not the same thing.

Legitimate enforcement is the prosecution of cartels and human traffickers, the orderly processing of asylum claims, work-authorization audits of employers, and the targeted detention of individuals convicted of serious crimes. Most Virginians support this. The bipartisan deal Wittman let die would have funded it.

What is happening now is something else. Masked federal agents are seizing people at courthouses — people who followed the rules and showed up for their own immigration hearings. Border Patrol agents are being deployed to U.S. cities far from any border. People with active legal status (Temporary Protected Status holders, asylum seekers with pending cases, green-card holders) are being swept up. Children are being separated from parents. Due process is being routed around as a matter of policy.

This isn’t law enforcement. It’s a performance of toughness designed to be filmed, posted, and used in campaign ads. It is, almost literally, theater — performance without policy.

What does Wittman say about any of this? Almost nothing. He has not held an in-person town hall to answer constituent questions about it — his constituents had to host a town hall in his absence at the Twin Hickory Library, with an empty chair where their congressman should have been. About 150 VA-01 residents showed up. Many spoke directly to the chair.

Wittman has not introduced legislation to require judicial oversight of ICE operations. He has not signed letters demanding accountability for due-process violations. He has not asked the hard questions about masked agents in our communities. That’s silent complicity.

What Democrats actually proposed — and what Wittman could still do

One more myth worth dispatching: the lazy claim that Democrats “want open borders” or “have no plan.”

Democrats worked with their Republican colleagues and tried to pass the most conservative border security overhaul in 40 years — the Lankford-Sinema-Murphy bill. The Biden administration endorsed it and pledged to sign it. House Democrats have repeatedly proposed bills to expand legal pathways, modernize agricultural visas, and protect Dreamers. Senate Democrats voted for the bipartisan deal not once but twice. Virginia’s senators — Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — voted yes both times.

Senate Republicans voted no. And in the House, Wittman and his Republican colleagues refused to allow a vote at all..

So when Wittman tells you Democrats are responsible for the “broken system,” ask him: Why did your party kill the only serious bipartisan fix in a generation?

If Wittman wanted to lead, here’s what he could do tomorrow:

• Co-sponsor a House version of the Lankford-Sinema-Murphy framework

• Demand judicial oversight of ICE detention and deportation operations

• Withhold funding for ICE until sufficient reforms are in place to protect the innocent

• Support a Dreamer protection bill — most of these young people have never known another country, and must not be held accountable for decisions they didn’t make

• Modernize agricultural and seafood worker visas so the Northern Neck farmers and Hampton Roads watermen who employ them can hire legally

• Hold an actual in-person town hall in VA-01 and answer questions about ICE tactics in our state

• Tell the truth about what immigrants contribute to Virginia, even when it complicates a campaign mailer

Wittman is choosing fear over facts, and politics over people

Strip away the press releases and the folksy emails, and Rob Wittman’s actual record on immigration is this: he stood by as his party killed the most conservative border deal in 40 years, voted for stunts that don’t fix anything, parroted false claims when it served the campaign narrative, exploited a family’s grief and twisted the facts to attack a Virginia governor doing serious work, and stayed silent when masked federal agents started disappearing his neighbors at courthouses.

We deserve a member of Congress who can hold two thoughts in their head at once: that immigration policy genuinely needs reform, and that the people affected by that policy are human beings — our neighbors, our coworkers, our kids’ classmates. We deserve a representative who will tell the truth instead of peddling fear. That is not who Rob Wittman is, so it’s time for him to go.

We can do better… and we will! Find out about eight better options to represent VA-01. We’ll continue to bring you updates on what we can all do to make sure we replace Wittman this November.

What do you think Wittman should do — or stop doing — on immigration? Let us know what you think by posting comments here or on any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

NOTE: This article is now outdated.
Please see our completely refreshed update here.

This article was changed on 7 June to update the number of candidates from eight to seven, removing Lewis Littlepage from the analysis. Mr. Littlepage dropped out of the VA-01 race in May.

Greetings from Wittman Watch HQ! 👋

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Groceries cost more than they did last year. Rent, electricity, and gas also cost more; childcare, too. And if you’re one of the roughly 23,000 VA-01 residents expected to lose Medicaid coverage under the law Rob Wittman voted for, your healthcare is about to cost a lot more, or possibly even disappear.

This is the affordability and healthcare crunch every VA-01 family is feeling. Affordability is a bigger problem today than in 2024, when Donald Trump promised to bring prices down “on day one.” Every candidate on the August 4 Democratic Party primary ballot is running on affordability. But what differentiates them?

We’ve read every campaign website. We scrolled their Facebook, Instagram, X, and Bluesky accounts. The good news for VA-01 voters is that you have real choices. Each of the eight seven Democratic candidates brings different priorities, different experience, and different ideas about how to represent us. In this newsletter we’ll help you choose wisely.

What they have in common

Across the eight seven Democratic challengers, the consensus is broad. All of them want to lower prescription drug prices. All want to protect Medicaid. All want billionaires and large corporations to pay higher effective tax rates than teachers and firefighters currently do. All want reproductive rights protected in federal law. All of them understand that rural hospitals (most specifically Rappahannock General) are at risk because of the cuts Wittman enthusiastically supported.

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

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.

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Get to know your candidates

Now let’s review what each candidate emphasizes most strongly, in their own framing:

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

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

• Distinctive: guaranteed income, uncapping the U.S. House so each member represents fewer constituents.

Tim Cywinski — community organizer, Sierra Club veteran, gun violence prevention advocate, refuses corporate PAC money. 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.

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

• 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.

Jason Knapp — 21-year Navy F/A-18 pilot, NATO veteran, energy policy expert, grew up on SNAP and Medicaid, refuses corporate PAC money.

• Centerpiece: economic security from the ground up, democracy that works, real support for veterans.

• Distinctive: national-security Democrat profile and discipline.

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

• Centerpiece: a comprehensive universal healthcare system that includes dental, vision, and hearing.

• Distinctive: the most expansive progressive platform in the field, including abolishing ICE, releasing the full Epstein files, raising the minimum wage to $30/hour, and impeaching Trump on day one.

Lewis Littlepage — retired attorney and retired Air Force officer, former federal prosecutor, current Poquoson Electoral Board chair.

• Centerpiece: secure borders with constitutional rights, fiscal responsibility, equal justice.

• Distinctive: the most district-specific accountability document in the field — a dedicated farmer-focused page enumerating specific harms Wittman’s votes have done to Virginia farmers and how a different representative would respond.

Shannon Taylor — 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 accountable.

• Distinctive: pledged as commonwealth’s attorney never to prosecute women or doctors for abortion care; took on the KKK and the NRA.

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

• Centerpiece: protect Medicaid and reduce the deficit, lower drug costs without “stifling innovation.”

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

Where Wittman has waffled

There are some specific, notable gaps between what Wittman tells you and what he has actually done.

On healthcare. Wittman’s campaign website still talks about “transparency in healthcare,” “ending surprise billing,” and protecting “current Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries.” Then he voted for a law that the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates will strip coverage from roughly 350,000 Virginians, including more than 23,000 of your neighbors in VA-01. Vote Smart shows him rated 0% by the Alliance for Retired Americans and 0% by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

On the Medicaid promise specifically. He signed a letter to House leadership saying he opposed the version of the One Big Beautiful Bill that would gut Medicaid. Then he betrayed us all and voted yes anyway. The cuts total roughly $1 trillion. Rappahannock General Hospital — the closest hospital for many Northern Neck residents — is among the rural hospitals at risk of closing as a result.

On affordability. He campaigned on “lowering costs.” He then voted for tariffs that have raised consumer prices and squeezed Virginia farmers; for a tax-and-spending package that adds trillions to the federal debt; and against the Affordable Care Act provisions that help the very middle-class families he claims to represent. This was all under the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which he now refers to as the “Working Families Tax Cut Act.” That bill doesn’t reference “working families” even once, and the permanent tax cuts are for the wealthy and corporations. His insistence on calling it this name is a sick, deeply unfunny joke.

On democracy. Wittman joined the Texas v. Pennsylvania amicus brief in December 2020, a lawsuit attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election. The lawsuit failed, so he then voted against certifying the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021. His campaign rhetoric emphasizes “constitutional values.” Wittman’s votes — as usual — don’t match his words; he cannot be trusted.

What’s at stake

The Cook Political Report rated VA-01 as “Leans Republican” before the Virginia Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling reinstated the old map. VA-01 was one of only 19 districts nationally that moved left at the presidential level in 2024. The most recent polling of the existing 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. In a head-to-head matchup earlier in the campaign, the race polled dead even.

A Democrat can win the VA-01 race. Whichever Democrat emerges from August 4 will face a vulnerable Rob Wittman in a district that’s tilting away from him. In 18 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 of us see what Wittman has become: a silently complicit MAGA politician who serves wealthy donors and sells our rights, liberties, and opportunities to please 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.

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How to vote in the Democratic primary

• June 19: Early voting begins

• July 13: Voter registration deadline

• August 4, 2026: Election Day

✅ You can register, check your status, or request an absentee ballot at elections.virginia.gov.

Read the candidates’ websites. Follow them on your favorite platforms. If you can, donate to their campaigns. Here’s how you can find them:

Show up at candidate forums. Ask them questions. They are running to represent you. Make them earn it.

We’ll continue tracking each candidate’s promises against their actions through August and into November. Subscribe for updates, and tell us your thoughts about the candidate field in the comments here or on any of our social media channels: BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

• Last week we brought you an update on the State of the Race.

• Tuesday’s Myth of the Week addressed whether Wittman is good for small business. (No.)

• Our social channels have been abuzz this week with lots of spirited debate. Join us on Substack, Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram, or Reddit.

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Data centers are “the information backbone of an increasingly digital world.” These specialized, industrial facilities enable the digital services upon which we’re increasingly reliant. Inside these monolithic buildings are rows upon rows of servers, a sea of switches and cables, and the hardware needed to keep them functioning.

The construction and operation of data centers strains Virginia’s resources while also negatively affecting our health, pocketbooks, and quality of life — especially for rural residents. To address the issue, Virginia’s General Assembly legislators introduced dozens of bills in 2026 to rein in data center growth before it becomes unmanageable. Governor Spanberger signed most of the energy and data center legislation and responded with amendments to others. On 4/23/26, lawmakers “accepted amendments to bills that reallocated distribution costs for data centers to rein in residential power bills, but rejected amendments that would have lowered the return on equity for Dominion Energy.”

Data centers are necessary, but we must have regulations and oversight to minimize their harmful effects and their indiscriminate sprawl. We’d have less to worry about if not for Congressman Rob Wittman, who bends the knee to the wealthy donors, PACS, and fossil fuel companies behind data center proliferation. In particular, Wittman’s one “little” vote for H. R. 1 has huge consequences for our district.

A brief history of data centers in Virginia

Virginia is already home to more than 300 data centers, thus earning the nickname “Data Center Alley.” 80% of them are situated in Northern Virginia; the rest are clustered in Henrico and Mecklenburg counties. Over the past 20 years or so, a significant amount of Virginia farmland has evolved into a technology hub. Major infrastructure investment, access to a high-tech workforce, and compelling tax incentives have made Virginia the data center capital of the world.

For example, White Oak Technology Park in eastern Henrico, owned by Meta, spans 130 acres and provides computing power for Meta’s platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. As of 2023, Amazon Web Services planned to invest $35 billion in Virginia to build more data centers across the Commonwealth by 2040.

The Data Center Coalition claims that data centers are an “economic powerhouse” for our state because of the tax revenue, job creation, and investment opportunities they create:

• Meeting the rampant demand for cloud computing services

• Tax revenue supports other projects (for instance, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund)

• Job growth

• Business-to-business purchases (e.g., security and HVAC services)

• Data companies provide grants to schools and community organizations

• Local economy diversification

• Higher economic output for Virginia ($15.3 billion in 2021)

Tax exemptions spurred 90% of data center investment and growth. But these tax exemptions also mean that data center construction is being subsidized by Virginia’s taxpayers, to the tune of $1.9 billion a year. That breaks down to “a taxpayer cost of more than $1.2 million” for each new job generated by data centers.

The explosive proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and its data-intensive needs will continue to require increasing amounts of massive processing power. While data centers may be indispensable, their effects and consequences also require examination and regulation — and, so far, Rob Wittman has not spoken up to protect our district.

At what cost?

Data centers create significant environmental and resource costs.

• Unsustainable increases in water and energy usage, and land depletion

• Health risks from Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)

• Insufficient buffers between data centers and residential areas

• Environmental injustice and data center concentration in low-income/historically marginalized communities

• Threats to historical sites and family cemeteries

The weight of these burdens falls heavily on surrounding communities, especially rural and low-income areas, while the majority of economic benefits apply to entities outside these communities. There is a significant imbalance of needs between local, state and federal levels.

Data center campuses, which include server warehouses, electrical substations and backup diesel generators, far surpass the carbon footprint of business developments like factories and stadiums. Some data centers “need more power than a small city, more than any utility has ever supplied to a single user.” Virginia’s data centers are in the coal-heavy grid region of the mid-Atlantic. Most electrical grids currently rely on fossil fuels, so there’s a huge climate cost attached to powering data centers — unless and until renewable energy sources replace fossil fuels on a massive scale.

Wittman opened a Pandora’s Box of data center problems

How has Wittman’s support of the Trump administration’s energy policies impacted data center development in VA-01? Should we be worried?

Wittman’s H. R. 1 vote spurred hyperscale data center construction, along with the promise of tax credits for the companies who built them.

Wittman’s track record of awarding tax cuts to billionaires while his constituents suffer financially plays a role here. Tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk demand ever-increasing amounts of energy for data centers, in service of goals that don’t necessarily align with those of Virginia’s residents. Thanks to Wittman’s enabling of their exploding net worth, billionaires have even more to spend on lobbying for and constructing data centers as well as the pollution-gushing power plants that fuel them.

Tech companies claim that more nuclear power will solve the fossil fuel problem. Meta, Google, and Amazon want to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050 (it’s currently at 20%; over 50% of Virginia’s electricity is powered by natural gas). They’re targeting counties like Goochland for their heavy industry development. During a meeting of the Goochland Planning Commission on 9/25/25, Supervisor Lyle noted that “Goochland County will newly receive $1.5 million in annual tax revenue from Amazon, and another $93 million from Eli Lilly over the next 20 years.”

Wittman regularly touts nuclear energy on his website. But nuclear power plants like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are unproven technology that will take years to build. Virginians subsidize data centers with our taxpayer money, but it doesn’t seem to be paying off — for us regular folks, at least. The office of former Governor Glenn Youngkin called Amazon’s forthcoming data center expansion “the largest capital investment in Virginia’s history” — but Virginia lost $1.6 billion in “sales and tax use revenue in FY 2025 to data centers.” That money could have funded teacher raises, health insurance assistance, infrastructure, childcare, and a vast number of other benefits for VA-01.

That loss is why, as of this writing, the General Assembly House and Senate chambers are in a heated state budget proposal disagreement over data center tax breaks. The Senate wants to end the “$1.6B sales tax exemption” for data center companies and restore a 5.3% data center sales tax. But House Democrats want to maintain the tax breaks, and Governor Spanberger hesitates to renege on “Virginia’s commitments to businesses that have invested in the Commonwealth.” The 2026 legislative session ended without a budget deal because of the data center issue; a special session on 4/23/26 also resulted in a budget deal impasse for the same reason. If the House prevails, we’ll have to keep subsidizing data centers while the companies behind them rake in profits. And Wittman has already profited from data center proliferation (which we’ll return to in a moment).

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A recent computer component supply problem caused by AI and data centers is affecting consumers directly. A sudden, severe DRAM memory shortage is sending prices of computer components like RAM and graphics cards soaring. A predicted year-over-year 23% rise in DRAM bit growth indicates that consumer products reliant on DRAM (such as computers, phones, and other consumer devices) will become scarcer and more expensive.

Another issue is that data centers need to operate 24/7. Reliable wind and solar power, partnered with battery technologies, could provide enough consistent energy, but Wittman does nothing whenever Trump blocks renewable energy projects such as Virginia’s offshore wind project (CVOW). In response to the Trump administration’s policies that limit affordable, clean energy, The Environmental Defense Fund stated that “[b]locking cheap, clean energy while doubling down on outdated fossil fuels makes no economic or environmental sense.” But it has definitely increased our utility bills.

While we scramble to find enough money to pay our bills, Wittman profits from utility rate hikes driven by companies like NextEra in which he owns stock. When confronted about his “financial entanglement,” he blamed data centers for rising energy costs. That blame-game strategy is undermined by his vote for H. R. 1, “which accelerated the construction of data centers nationwide.” Wittman cannot have it both ways when data center proliferation and spiking energy costs are helping to line his own pockets..

H. R. 1 also gutted green energy tax credits. By voting for it, Wittman slowed clean energy development and sabotaged the development of new projects, including the jobs they would have generated for Virginians.

Rural residents exploited

Data center problems are state- and district-wide, but they’ve disproportionally impacted Virginia’s rural residents. Rural communities’ sparser populations and shrinking tax bases make them vulnerable. These areas often have insufficient funds for schools, services, and infrastructure. To rural communities, data center tax revenue and job creation can look appealing, perhaps even lifesaving. A study revealed that data center companies promise they’ll deliver “numerous tech jobs” to rural communities. In fact, they’re targeting rural areas for the “lower construction costs, abundant land… network connectivity and access to reliable, affordable electricity.”

Goochland County is one example of a rural community that wants to bolster economic growth through data center tax revenue. Residents have raised concerns as “local governments rush to join what looks like a stampede of unchecked development in central Virginia.”

In Warren County, citizens are sounding the alarm about “what’s really happening” with data centers. The main concerns are water and electricity usage, environmental risks (such as “what happens if 30,000 gallons of glycol [from a data center] leaks into the aquifer”), and health impacts. When dangling the tax revenue carrot, data center companies are playing games of bait and switch:

A lack of transparency from elected officials in charge of the data center approval process is another problem for rural Virginians:

Despite the potential advantages of data centers, rural residents have been mounting numerous efforts to stop them, such as when Hanover residents fought a data center development in Mountain Road Technology Park. The proposal before the Hanover County Planning commission would have rezoned “nearly 430 acres into a data center campus.” Residents didn’t want that “nightmare” in their backyards, citing noise and pollution as deterrents.

Data centers aren’t good neighbors

Data centers generate round-the-clock industrial noise pollution. Documented examples of the nightmare effects of living near a data center include:

• Spiking blood pressure and chest pain

• Migraines

• Sleep deprivation

• Hearing loss and tinnitus

• Motion sickness and nausea

• Fatigue

• Pets having seizures

Then there’s the possible decrease in property values. Who wants to buy a house with a data center behind it?

All of these problems have been driving resistance to data centers in multiple Virginia counties. The Neighbors For Change Data Centers page is a testament to this hot-button issue.

Rob Wittman is an environmental catastrophe with a poor track record in protecting Virginia’s environment and people. His lack of concern about the impact of data centers on our daily lives and health is abhorrent, especially considering the fact that he helped sabotage the Affordable Care Act and voted for H. R. 1 — both of which make it harder for many thousands of his constituents to access affordable healthcare. So, as the data center health threat looms and we are yet to discover the long-term effects of exposure, Wittman fails to protect us while blocking the discovery and deployment of viable solutions.

Mitigating data center harm

Per Inside Climate News, what was once quiet infrastructure is now a national flashpoint. Some $900 million in data center projects in Virginia have been blocked, and $45.8 billion in projects have been delayed due to increased engagement by citizens and environmental organizations demanding answers and better oversight.

From Michigan to Maine, and from Wisconsin to Virginia — where polls revealed “the public had turned sharply against data centers” — 70% of people now believe the costs of data centers outweighs the benefits. Regardless of their ideology or identity, they’re concerned about noise pollution, higher utility bills, wildlife impacts, and even effects on fertility. At a time when Iran struck “data center infrastructure in the Persian Gulf,” some worry that data centers here could also turn into a national security risk.

Bipartisan opposition to data centers has been eroding political divides. It has inadvertently built a bridge of solidarity between unlikely bedfellows, such as Tea Party residents and progressives who have found common purpose to oppose data center development in Hanover County. Joining forces engenders more trust between residents, empowers ordinary citizens, and highlights common goals in fighting oppressive tech companies and unregulated A.I.

No one denies that we need data centers — but tech billionaires, Wittman, and Trump insist it must be unconstrained by anything other than their anticipated profits. That’s shamefully reckless. Mitigating the harm of data center expansion includes guiding business development with smart growth principles, including:

• Balancing economic development with conservation strategies that benefit our health and communities

• Regulating construction at the state level

• Limiting the number and concentration of data centers

• Distributing more tax revenue to the districts most impacted by data centers

• Giving local government more oversight and enforcement over issues like water usage and sound ordinance

• Diversifying with businesses (e.g., light manufacturing, cold food processing, startups) that nurture jobs and revenue

Responsible legislators and communities are moving towards viable solutions to address data center harms. Virginia’s General Assembly is working on legislative solutions so Virginians can continue to benefit from data centers without being at the mercy of Big Tech— and of Wittman and his congressional cronies.

Another great step in the right direction? Vote Rob Wittman out in November! Here’s everything you need to know about the State of the Race: Virginia’s 2026 Elections.

What steps should Rob Wittman, Congress, and the state legislature take to minimize data center harms? Let us know what you think by posting comments here or on any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.

MYTH:

Wittman is good for small business.

REALITY:

Wittman talks like a small business champion, but votes to cut economic growth and make small businesses more vulnerable.

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It’s National Small Business Week, and Rob Wittman and his allies want voters in his district to believe he is a practical, pro-small-business conservative. That story works if the audience only sees awards, roundtables, and tax-cut talking points. It falls apart when his full record comes into view.

For independent voters — and for Republicans and center-right voters who are uneasy with the current Trump-era direction of the country — the real question is whether Wittman’s choices have made it easier for ordinary people to run a business, keep workers insured, manage costs, and survive economic shocks. On that test, his record points in exactly the wrong direction.

Where Wittman deserves credit

Wittman has done some good for small business owners, and we’re happy to give him credit where it’s due. He supported extending the Section 199A pass-through deduction, a real tax benefit for LLCs, S-corporations, sole proprietors, and partnerships. His office says more than 59,000 VA-01 businesses file this way, and preserving that deduction prevented a significant tax increase for many of them.

Wittman is a co-sponsor of the Veterans Member Business Loan Act, which would make it easier for veteran-owned small businesses to access credit through credit unions — important in a district with a large military and veteran population. Notably, this bill hasn’t passed and might not ever pass. So while we acknowledge that it has Wittman’s support, we can’t count it as an achievement.

Why that’s not the whole story

The problem is that small-business policy is not just about tax treatment for pass-through income. It is also about whether owners and workers can afford health insurance; whether input costs are rising because of tariff policy; whether local contractors can count on the federal work that sustains Hampton Roads; and whether entrepreneurs can still access public infrastructure intended to help them start and grow.

Those broader tests matter much more than an award from a trade group or a lobbying group roundtable. Many voters of all stripes understand this instinctively. They do not want ideological branding. They want competence, stability, lower costs, and a government that does not add pressures to ordinary life. On those measures, Wittman’s record looks much less like practical conservatism and much more like reflexive loyalty to the Trump agenda — while ignoring the real needs of Virginians, whether or not they own small businesses.

Healthcare is where Wittman’s damage hurts most

Small businesses do not operate in the same universe as large corporations. They usually cannot self-insure, negotiate from scale, or absorb major benefit-cost shocks. Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families found that 58% of small businesses have owners, employees, or family members who rely on Medicaid or CHIP, and 56% have stakeholders who depend on ACA Marketplace plans with premium tax credits.

That makes healthcare affordability a core small-business issue. Wittman failed to act for months on extending the enhanced ACA premium tax credits that kept coverage affordable for self-employed workers and small businesses. In Virginia, benchmark ACA premiums rose an average of 21.6% for 2026, with reporting and rate filings tying much of that increase to the expiration of those tax credits. Cardinal News reported that Virginians buying coverage on the marketplace were hit with massive increases, a burden that lands especially hard on self-employed people and small business owners.

This was not abstract. A Lancaster County small-business owner, Charlotte Hollings, said her premiums doubled after the credits were allowed to expire. Wittman eventually voted to extend the credits and was one of only 17 House Republicans to do so, which deserves notice. But that too-little-too-late vote — which came only after premiums had already spiked — could not erase the months of inaction that allowed the damage to happen in the first place.

Then came Medicaid. Wittman signed onto a letter urging House leadership to protect vulnerable people from harmful Medicaid cuts, only to turn around and vote for a bill that enacted those cuts. Wittman’s vote slashed Medicaid by approximately $863 billion over 10 years, and the CBO estimated that 10.3 million people would lose Medicaid or CHIP coverage. For Virginia alone, that’s an estimated 260,000 people projected to lose coverage — including over 20,000 in VA-01.

The Virginian-Pilot editorial board was blunt: Wittman and Rep. Kiggans “sold out their constituents.” The board called their reversal “a betrayal were it not so predictable.”

For an independent voter who values honesty and steadiness, this is the kind of record that raises a basic question: if a politician says one thing and votes the other way when party leadership calls, is there any value in their promises, pledges, and nice words?

Tariffs don’t help small businesses

Many voters (and especially independent voters) are skeptical of old ideological talking points from both parties, and rightly so. But the economics here are straightforward. When tariffs raise the cost of inputs and inventory, smaller firms with thinner margins get squeezed first.

Wittman has voted three times to protect Trump’s tariff regime from congressional oversight. That matters because those tariffs have real downstream effects. The Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs cost the average household about $1,000 in 2025, rising to about $1,300 in 2026 if they remained in place. The Federal Reserve found substantial pass-through from tariffs into consumer prices in 2025, including an 8.5% year-over-year increase in prices for China-origin goods by December.

Small firms are less able than large corporations to hedge, stockpile, or negotiate supplier terms. A MetLife/U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index found that 75% of small businesses said rising prices had significantly affected them, and 46% called inflation their biggest challenge.

If a lawmaker campaigns on lowering costs and then votes to avoid scrutiny for cost-raising tariff policy, that is not pragmatic leadership. It is partisan compliance dressed up as economic toughness, and it’s protecting the tariffs themselves over American businesses.

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DOGE cuts hit the local economy

Ours is not an ordinary district when it comes to federal spending and defense-linked employment. Hampton Roads depends on a broad network of contractors, subcontractors, service firms, and veteran-owned businesses tied directly or indirectly to federal activity. That means ideologically-branded cuts to government do not just land on nameless bureaucracies. They ripple outward through the private economy, into our towns, Main Streets, and neighborhoods.

Research from GovWin IQ found that more than half of DOGE-cancelled contracts were held by small businesses. Veteran-owned and service-disabled veteran-owned small firms were hit especially hard. Politico reported on veteran-owned businesses that furloughed staff or shut down after contract cancellations.

Virginia lost a net 23,500 civilian federal jobs in 2025, wiping out six years of federal job gains in less than a year. Old Dominion University economist Bob McNab estimates that this equals approximately 47,000 private sector job equivalents in economic impact. Small businesses serving federal workers in Hampton Roads and elsewhere in VA-01 felt that directly. CNBC removed Virginia from its list of top states for business, in part because of DOGE’s economic impact.

Wittman directly backed DOGE during a telephone town hall when his own constituents expressed concerns. When the rescissions package came to the floor to codify DOGE cuts, passing 214–212, Wittman provided a key vote in favor. Here’s what we said at the time:

Virginia has more than 234,000 federal workers, and polling showed DOGE was deeply underwater with Virginia voters - only 39% of people supported the DOGE cuts — including within VA-01. And Wittman voted for it anyway!

This is Wittman’s clear pattern: expressions of concern in his words, party loyalty in his voting record.

The SBA and business support infrastructure also matter

People trying to start or grow their businesses need access to practical support, and we want them to have it; when new businesses thrive, more jobs and opportunities exist for all of us. Small Business Development Centers, Women’s Business Centers, SCORE mentoring, and SBA-backed loan programs are key to building more and better small businesses. SBA also the National Small Business Week, which the administration is observing - or would be if President Trump could keep on topic for more than five seconds.

Wittman apparently wants to ensure that entrepreneurs don’t get help to start small businesses, grow, and compete. The White House’s FY2027 budget proposal - which Wittman has not opposed - calls for a 67% reduction in SBA funding, slashing the agency from roughly $1 billion to $329 million. This would eliminate $309 million from entrepreneurial development programs, including Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), Women’s Business Centers, and SCORE mentoring services. The National Small Business Association (NSBA) flagged this budget as a serious threat to the infrastructure that helps small businesses start, grow, and compete.

A lawmaker who truly sees small business as the backbone of the economy should be standing up to defend this support structure, not siding with an agenda that weakens or removes it.

The NFIB award is real, but it is not a full performance review

Wittman’s supporters will continue to cite his NFIB “Guardian of Small Business” award, and indeed he did receive it. But to understand what it means, we voters need to know what it does and does not measure.

The award is based on how often a member votes with NFIB on a selected set of key votes, with a 70% threshold for recognition. Those votes reflect the priorities of one single influential trade group. They do not analyze or provide a complete picture of whether a member’s overall record lowers healthcare costs, moderates tariffs, protects local contractors, or preserves the public business-support infrastructure that many smaller firms rely on.

That distinction is important. An interest-group award is not proof that Wittman’s votes have improved outcomes for small business owners.

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Voters should ask who benefits most

One of the most politically-revealing details in this debate is that the tax policy Wittman cites as proof of his small-business credentials appears to benefit him personally in a significant way. Analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Wittman could personally save roughly $19,900 to $60,000 annually from the extended pass-through deduction, largely because of income from his North Carolina rental property.

That does not make the deduction illegitimate, nor does it negate any positive outcomes for others. But it does undermine the moral simplicity of the sales pitch. If the centerpiece of a politician’s “small business” case also produces a major personal windfall while average families receive very modest benefits, independent voters are right to be skeptical.

What this says about the larger choice ahead

The argument for candidates other than Wittman is strongest when it’s grounded in practical outcomes. Progressive candidates tend to start from a simple premise: healthcare is economic policy, wages are economic policy, affordable child care is economic policy, infrastructure is economic policy, and stable democratic governance is economic policy. For small businesses and working families, that framework is often closer to real life than the narrower Wittman/Republican formula of tax cuts plus culture-war messaging.

A pro-worker, pro-healthcare, pro-stability agenda is also a pro-small-business agenda. Small businesses have the best chance of success when workers can see a doctor; when self-employed people can afford insurance; when tariffs are not randomly driving up input costs; when local contractors are not wiped out by ideological contract cancellations; and when startup support systems exist. Those are not fringe or abstract values, nor are they partisan ideas. They are the building blocks of a durable local economy.

If you’re an independent voter or someone who once voted for Wittman, ask yourself which candidate is more likely to protect healthcare access, reduce chaos, defend government accountability, and invest in the conditions that let ordinary people build a decent life. In today’s Republican Party, too many elected officials have shown that they will stomp on those goals for the sake of Trump-era party discipline — and Rob Wittman is a prime example of exactly that calculated betrayal.

The choice is not between perfect and imperfect, but between honest priorities

Wittman can fairly claim he supported one meaningful tax break for some business owners. But across the bigger questions that shape daily economic life — healthcare costs, tariffs, federal contracting stability, and business-support infrastructure — his record has been weaker, more partisan, and less honest than he’d like you to understand.

For voters who are tired of the chaos, tired of politicians saying one thing and voting another, and tired of being told to ignore the obvious in order to stay loyal to a particular party, that matters. The lesson of Wittman’s record is that he and his cronies too often protect the powerful, reward insider interests, and leave ordinary business owners and working families to absorb the fallout.

The better alternative is to support candidates whose policies line up with economic stability, healthcare security, accountability, and broad-based opportunity. If the goal is to vote for the people most likely to make daily life more affordable, more predictable, and more workable for ordinary Virginians, that case points away from Trump-aligned Republicans like Rob Wittman and toward candidates who are willing and able to govern from the ground up.

What do YOU think? Let us know in the comments here, or on any of our social media channels: BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.